THE  MAKING  OF  AN 
AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 


E)BRS_J 


ARTHUR,  E.BOSTWICK 


THE  MAKING  OF 
AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 


THE  MAKING  OF 
AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 


BY 

ARTHUR  E.  BOSTWICK 

LIBRARIAN    OF    THE   ST.    LOUIS    PUBLIC    LIBRARY 
AUTHOR  OF  "  EARMARKS   OP  LITERATURE,"   ETC. 


BOSTON 

LITTLE,  BROWN,  AND  COMPANY 
1915 


Copyright,  1915, 
BY  LITTLE,  BROWN,  AND  COMPANY. 

All  rights  reserved 
Published,  September,  1915 


Set  up  and  electrotyped  by  J .  S.  Cashing  Co.,  Norwood,  Mass. ,  U.S.A. 
Presswork  by  S.  J.  Parkhill&  Co.,  Boston,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


PREFACE 

THIS  series  of  essays  first  saw  the  light 
in  the  pages  of  The  Bookman,  New  York, 
in  the  issues  from  October,  1913,  to 
February,  1914.  The  only  changes  that 
have  been  made  in  them  here  are  altera- 
tions in  a  few  words  here  and  there 
necessitated  by  their  transfer  to  book- 
form. 

ARTHUR  E.  BOSTWICK. 


c.  Louis  PUBLIC  LIBRARY, 
August.  1915. 


333797 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTBB  PA«B 

I.    BOOKS  AS  ROOM-MATES     ...  1 

II.    THE  ART  OF  BROWSING     ...  SO 

III.  A  LITERARY  LABORATORY  ...  61 

IV.  THE  BOY  AND  THE  BOOK  ...  91 
V.    RECUPERATIVE  BIBLIOPHILY      .        . 

INDEX  .  .        .  ... 


THE  MAKING  OF  AN 
AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

I 

Books  as  Room-mates 

THE  selection  of  anybody  or  any- 
thing that  one  is  to  live  with  — 
animate    or    inanimate  —  is    al- 
ways   an    event    of    moment.     But    the 
precise  importance  of  the  act,  and  the 
way  in  which  it  must  be  done,  are  closely 
conditioned  by  the  degree  of  intimacy  of 
that  life  and  by  its  relationships.     One 
does  not  select  a  cook  and  a  wife  in  the 
same  way  or  for  the  same  reasons.     A 
suit  of  clothes  and  a  picture  are  not  chosen 
1 


THE   MAKING  OF 

for  the  same  qualities.  And  a  book  — 
which  is  a  curious  compound  of  the  ani- 
mate and  the  inanimate  —  the  recorded 
soul  of  a  human  being  clothed  in  paper 
and  ink  —  may  be  selected  for  reasons 
that  affect  only  its  inanimate  part  or  its 
soul  as  well.  If  it  is  to  serve  only  as  a 
decoration  ("books  do  furnish  a  room 
so!"  as  we  frequently  hear  it  said)  the 
soul  may  be  disregarded ;  even  the  paper- 
and-ink  parts  of  the  clothing  may  be 
absent.  Why  should  we  laugh  at  the 
newly  rich  who  lines  his  "library"  with 
dummies?  He  knows  what  he  wants, 
and  governs  his  selection  accordingly. 
The  man  who  buys  books  because  it  is 
the  thing  to  have  them,  or  because  he 
thinks  he  will  some  day  read  them,  or 
because  he  chooses  to  be  considered  "the 
owner  of  a  library,"  will  want  the  paper 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

and  ink  part  as  well  as  the  binding ;  but 
just  what  it  may  contain  is  of  secondary 
importance.  The  "collector,"  who  wants 
the  books  for  their  fine  bindings  or  the 
rarity  of  the  edition  or  the  eminence  of 
their  former  owners,  will  consider  these 
points,  and  these  only,  in  making  his 
choice.  He  is  not  forming  a  library  at 
all  in  the  proper  sense,  and  it  is  only 
chance  that  has  made  the  objects  of  his 
solicitude  books  rather  than  postage- 
stamps,  or  pottery,  or  old  guns.  His 
zeal  is  commendable  enough,  but  it  does 
not  bring  him  within  our  present  purview. 
We  shall  consider  only  the  man  who 
wants  his  books  as  room-mates  —  so 
near  to  him  that  from  his  accustomed  seat 
he  can  reach  out  a  hand  and  select  al- 
most any  one  of  them.  For  such  close 
relationship  love  is  the  only  tolerable 
3 


THE  MAKING  OF 

condition.  The  test  to  be  applied  here 
for  ownership  is  the  test  of  personal 
liking  —  that,  and  only  that.  This  means 
a  small  collection,  except  under  conditions 
that  we  shall  consider  later.  I  am  in- 
clined to  think  of  a  private  library  as 
Poe  thought  of  a  poem  —  that  a  large 
one  is  a  contradiction  in  terms.  And 
even  the  small  library  is  too  often  a 
misfit  —  no  indication  of  its  owner's 
abilities,  or  tastes,  or  aspirations.  The 
trouble  is  that  human  nature,  as  in  the 
days  of  old,  still  seeks  for  "a  sign." 
We  are  readier  to  do  something  pointed 
out  by  others  than  to  strike  out  in  ways 
of  our  own.  And  yet  every  advance  in 
civilisation  is  begun  with  some  unac- 
customed act,  scandalising  or  surprising 
or  amusing  our  less  progressive  neigh- 
bours. 

4 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

Particularly  do  we  seem  to  lack  origi- 
nality in  the  choice  of  reading.  We  de- 
mand lists  of  books  that  some  one  else 
thinks  we  ought  to  read  or  might  enjoy, 
while  the  great  ocean  of  literature  lies 
all  around  us  to  be  tested,  and  cherished 
or  cast  aside,  as  we  will. 

In  taking  our  physical  nutriment  we 
are  not  so  dependent  on  others'  tastes. 
The  invalid,  indeed,  may  obediently  eat 
what  his  physician  commands,  and  here 
and  there  we  see  a  spineless  soul  who 
consumes  breakfast  food  or  condiment 
simply  because  he  has  seen  it  advertised 
over  the  trolley-car  windows  or  in  the 
pages  of  his  daily  paper ;  but  we  largely 
eat  what  we  like.  At  any  rate,  no  sane 
person  goes  about  asking  for  lists  of 
foodstuffs  or  demanding  guidance  in  a 
course  of  eating.  There  is  no  reason 
5 


THE  MAKING  OF 

why  we  should  not  be  at  least  as  inde- 
pendent in  our  choice  of  mental  nutri- 
ment as  of  physical  food.  It  is  proper, 
we  may  suppose,  to  assume  that  the  man 
who  desires  to  own  books  has  at  least 
read  a  few,  and  that  among  these  are  one 
or  two  that  he  really  likes,  probably 
novels.  Selecting  one  of  these,  let  him 
re-read  it,  not  critically,  but  for  the  mere 
joy  of  it.  Having  done  so,  let  him  ask 
himself,  "Why  do  I  like  this  book?" 
For  the  mere  story?  for  the  character- 
drawing  ?  for  the  description  of  localities 
or  customs  ?  If  the  description  of  locality 
particularly  pleased  him,  he  will  proba- 
bly like  another  book  about  the  same 
place,  or  a  neighbouring  place,  or  an- 
other place  with  similar  characteristics. 
After  turning  over  the  leaves  of  a  dozen 
such  books,  whether  fiction  or  non-fic- 
6 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

tion,  it  will  be  strange  if  he  does  not 
meet  with  some  paragraph,  some  chapter- 
heading,  or  even  some  picture  that  kin- 
dles a  desire  to  test  the  book  further. 
The  reading  of  it  may  not  reveal  a  book 
to  be  owned  and  re-read ;  but  at  least  it 
may  lead,  by  some  hint,  some  allusion, 
the  jogging  of  some  forgotten  memory, 
to  another  book,  or  another  kind  of 
book,  to  be  read  and  tested.  After  a 
little  of  this,  the  reader  will  find  that, 
instead  of  wondering  what  he  ought  to 
read,  he  will  have  before  him  hundreds 
of  books  that  he  wants  to  read  and  has 
no  time  to  read.  Instead  of  asking  some 
one  for  a  list  that  means  nothing  to  him 
but  a  present  task  with  possible  disen- 
chantment, he  will  have  a  list  of  his  own, 
each  one  chosen  for  a  purpose  and  each 
certainly  productive  of  the  joy  of  test- 
7 


THE   MAKING  OF 

ing  as  well  as  bearing  the  possibility  of 
intimate  love  and  ownership. 

Having  reached  this  stage,  it  may  be 
proper  for  him  to  ask  advice,  for  in  de- 
crying the  blind  following  of  a  leader 
at  the  outset,  I  do  not  mean  to  exclude 
the  book-buyer  from  all  contact  with 
other  human  minds.  It  is  one  thing  to 
ask,  "What  shall  I  read?"  and  another 
to  say,  "I  am  looking  up  books  on  Peru ; 
can  you  recommend  one  that  you  have 
read?"  Only  it  should  be  remembered 
that  asking  and  taking  advice  are  two 
different  things.  We  may  laugh  at  the 
man  who  advises  with  all  his  friends 
and  then  goes  his  own  way  after  all; 
but  this  may  have  been  the  very  wisest 
course.  To  disregard  advice  wrong- 
headedly  is  foolish ;  to  do  so  because  amid 
all  the  possible  ways  pointed  out  to  you, 
8 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

you  recognise  your  own  as  best,  and  take 
it,  is  the  height  of  wisdom.  And  in  this 
matter  of  book-selection  one  is  not  con- 
fined to  a  single  path.  He  may  have 
his  own  way  and  take  the  advice  of  all 
his  friends  besides.  He  may  test  his 
own  book  on  Peru  and  all  those  that  his 
friends  have  named  to  him.  He  may 
like  none  well  enough  to  buy  it,  or  he 
may  love  and  purchase  all  —  though 
this  is  scarcely  likely.  But  if  he  buys 
not  from  love  but  from  mere  reliance  on 
advice,  then  he  is  false  to  the  principles 
that  I  am  trying  my  best  now  to  incul- 
cate. 

It  will  be  noted  that  in  the  method  of 
book-selection  here  recommended  —  the 
following  out  of  threads  of  personal  in- 
terest —  it  is  absolutely  necessary  to  have 
access  to  a  large  collection  of  books  to 


THE  MAKING  OF 

be  tested.  Fortunately,  in  the  modern 
public  library  we  have  an  institution,  de- 
veloped in  its  present  form  within  the 
past  quarter-century,  that  fulfils  this 
condition,  especially  since  its  adoption  of 
the  free-access  system  by  which  at  least 
part  of  its  books  may  be  seen  and  han- 
dled with  absolute  freedom  by  users. 
The  universal  employment  of  classified 
arrangement  on  the  shelves  enables  the 
user  to  go  without  delay  to  a  collection 
of  works  on  Arctic  exploration,  or  wire- 
less telegraphy,  or  the  German  drama, 
or  whatever  may  be  the  special  subject  in 
which  he  wishes  to  subject  books  to  his 
test.  And  the  prevalence  of  the  circu- 
lating feature  —  the  facility  with  which 
books  may  be  borrowed  for  home  use, 
makes  the  careful  reading  of  the  final  test 
possible  under  the  most  favorable  condi- 
10 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

tions.  All  this  would  have  been  im- 
possible fifty  years  ago.  That  the  trend 
of  the  public  library,  an  institution 
thought  by  some  to  make  the  private 
ownership  of  books  unnecessary,  should 
have  thus  been  toward  conditions  that 
favour  the  most  intelligent  and  rational 
selection  of  books  for  one's  own  library 
is  certainly  interesting,  if  not  surprising. 
The  public  library  may  thus  perform 
important  functions  in  the  selection  of 
books  for  private  ownership,  serving  as 
a  great  storehouse  for  reference  and  for 
testing  one's  likes  and  dislikes.  If  one 
can  afford  it,  of  course,  he  may  own 
books  for  these  purposes  also,  as  well  as 
the  small,  intimate,  personal  collection 
that  I  have  chosen  to  call  his  library  par 
excellence.  There  must,  of  course,  be 
some  place  where  the  book  is  seen  and 
11 


THE  MAKING  OF 

handled  for  the  first  time.     The  begin- 
ner can  not  tell  much  from  catalogues. 
This  place  of  first  intention  may  be  the 
public  library,  or  the  house  of  a  friend, 
or  a  good  bookstore.     A  bookstore  can 
never  fulfil  the  complete  functions  of  a 
testing  laboratory,  but  to  one  who  de- 
sires to  own  the  books  that  he  is  testing, 
as  well  as  those  that  have  passed  the  test, 
it  is  superior  in  most  respects  to  a  pub- 
lic library  for  the  preliminary  handling. 
The  ease  with  which  books  may  be  in- 
spected in  our  best  bookstores  often  puts 
our  public  libraries  to  shame.     And  not 
only  so,  but  the  bookstore,  being  a  com- 
mercial enterprise,  naturally  carries  du- 
plicates in  far  greater  numbers  than  the 
library.     Where  the  latter  can  afford  a 
dozen  copies  of  a  popular  work,  the  store 
has  hundreds,  and  a  goodly  number  of 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

them  are  piled  together  on  its  show 
counters.  There  is  no  danger  that  the 
book  will  be  "out,"  or  even  that  it  will 
be  in  the  hands  of  another  curious  ex- 
perimenter. All  frequenters  are  possible 
customers,  and  if  you  are  such  not  only 
in  posse  but  in  esse,  every  door  will  fly 
open  to  you. 

The  real  book-enthusiast,  of  course, 
will  make  his  tests  wherever  he  finds  his 
material  —  at  library  and  store,  at  rail- 
way stall  and  in  private  collection.  The 
advertisements  in  the  trolley  cars  and 
the  reviews  in  the  papers  and  magazines 
are  all  so  much  scent  on  the  trails  that 
he  seeks. 

The  mass  of  technical  literature  — the 

books  and  magazines  about  books  —  the 

lists,  and  the  lists  of  lists,  and  the  lists 

of  lists  of  lists  —  is  confusion  worse  con- 

13 


THE  MAKING  OF 

founded  to  the  tyro,  and  it  is  increasing 
daily  in  bulk  and  complexity.  For  the 
man  who  is  beginning  to  purchase  books 
as  room-mates  it  is  better  to  disregard  it 
all.  Later,  when  he  has  his  bearings,  he 
may  profitably  use  it  as  "scent"  —  to  use 
the  metaphor  employed  above.  He  will 
never  purchase  from  it  directly  for  his 
inner  circle,  but  it  may  guide  him  to 
books,  especially  new  ones,  that  he  may 
want  to  test.  The  confirmed  book-buyer 
will  spend  precious  hours  running  over 
reviews  and  lists  and  auction  catalogues 
with  this  in  view., 

It  has  been  suggested  above  that 
the  branching  tree  of  interest,  which 
alone  can  bear  fruit  of  good  reading,  may 
have  its  root  in  the  reading  of  a  book. 
It  may,  of  course,  take  its  origin  equally 
well  in  anything  that  may  stimulate 
14 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

interest.  Most  men  of  active  minds  have 
these  foci  of  interest  entirely  apart  from 
books,  but  it  is  remarkable  how  many  of 
them,  even  those  with  scholarly  and 
bookish  tastes,  have  failed  to  realise 
that  these  interests  may  be  led,  enlarged 
and  expanded  by  reading.  The  reason 
for  this  is  not  far  to  seek.  Not  so  very 
long  ago  the  subjects  of  books  were  pre- 
dominantly "scholarly"  —  they  were 
literary,  philosophical,  speculative.  They 
did  not  touch  daily  life  or  its  practical 
needs  in  more  than  one  point  out  of  every 
hundred.  The  result  is  that  while  the 
traditionally  bred  man  looks  to  books 
for  information  on  history,  poetry,  philos- 
ophy or  astronomy,  he  would  never  think 
of  going  to  them  for  data  on  carpentry 
or  plumbing,  for  directions  regarding 
factory  cost-keeping  or  the  sailing  of 
15 


THE   MAKING  OF 

small  boats,  for  instruction  in  potato- 
culture  or  the  dressing  of  windows  for 
advertising  purposes.  Even  those  who 
know  vaguely  that  there  are  books  on 
all  these  subjects,  and  on  a  thousand 
others  quite  as  practical,  are  astonished 
when  they  first  discover  the  volume  of 
literature  that  is  available  regarding 
them.  The  content  of  our  current  litera- 
ture has  in  fact  become  enormously  en- 
larged on  the  side  that  brings  it  nearer  to 
life  —  the  life  of  action,  in  distinction 
to  the  life  of  speculation  or  of  emotion, 
which  has  always  been  well  represented 
in  literature. 

The  man  whose  interest  is  already 
strong  in  some  subject,  such  as  boat- 
building, may  send  for  a  catalogue  of 
works  on  the  subject,  which  will  give 
him  all  he  wants  to  do  for  years  in  look- 
16 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

ing  over  books,  picking  out  those  for 
testing,  reading  them  and  selecting  what 
he  wants  for  intimate  companionship. 
It  is  only  within  the  last  few  years  that 
the  public  library  has  discovered  this 
huge,  growing  annex  to  literature.  It 
has,  indeed,  been  so  tardy  in  its  recogni- 
tion, that  hundreds  of  special  libraries 
have  sprung  up,  gathered  by  individ- 
uals, firms,  associations  and  companies 
that  are  specially  interested.  We  thus 
have  club  libraries  on  yachting  or  fishing, 
insurance  libraries  owned  by  the  great 
companies,  libraries  on  chemical  tech- 
nology, electric  engineering  or  pottery, 
collected  by  industrial  organisations. 
The  Bell  Telephone  Company  alone  has 
collected  and  uses  constantly  no  less  than 
five  of  these  industrial  libraries  on  as 
many  subjects  connected  with  the  opera- 
17 


THE  MAKING  OF 

tion  of  its  lines.  Many  of  these  libraries, 
of  course,  are  necessary  independently 
of  the  existence  of  great  public  collec- 
tions, but  many  others  owe  their  exist- 
ence solely  to  the  unaccountable  neglect 
of  this  great  field  by  the  organisations 
whose  particular  business  it  is  to  get 
close  to  the  public  needs. 

Where  the  book-expert  himself  has 
thus  erred  it  is  not  remarkable  that  the 
layman  in  most  cases  remains  ignorant. 
Trained  to  consider  a  library  as  a  collec- 
tion of  books  on  literature,  history  and 
the  pure  sciences,  it  is  not  remarkable 
that  the  content  of  these  special  libraries 
has  in  most  cases  remained  to  him  a 
closed  book. 

Nor  must  another  influence  in  this 
direction,  far  removed  from  the  scholarly, 
be  overlooked.  The  so-called  "practi- 
X8 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

cal  man,"  accustomed  to  look  on  all 
" book-learning"  as  impractical  and  ideal- 
istic, can  not  quite  accustom  himself  to 
this  invasion  of  his  field  by  the  forces  of 
print  and  paper.  To  him  a  book  on 
plumbing  is  as  ridiculous  as  one  on  the 
Fourth  Dimension.  Doubtless  he  has 
some  reason,  for  at  one  time  exact  know- 
ledge of  plumbing  and  of  English  com- 
position did  not  reside  in  the  same  person, 
and  the  latter  was  often  favoured  at  the 
expense  of  the  former.  This  is  now  rarely 
the  case,  but  to  the  "practical"  man  the 
fact  that  information  is  put  down  in 
print  still  militates  against  its  accuracy. 
Readers  of  these  pages  may  possibly 
remember  a  series  of  comic  pictures,  run- 
ning through  the  daily  papers,  whose 
hero  was  "Book-Taught  Bilkins."  Bil- 
kins  relied  on  the  information  to  be  ob- 
19 


THE  MAKING  OF 

tained  from  books,  and  made  himself 
ridiculous,  in  one  instance  after  another, 
until  he  had  fatigued  the  public  taste. 
The  significant  thing  was  the  reliance  of 
the  artist,  apparently  well  founded,  on 
the  public  recognition,  as  an  elementary 
fact,  of  the  inherent  absurdity  of  getting 
anything  "practical"  out  of  a  book. 
Thus  the  uneducated,  as  well  as  the 
educated,  classes  hold  the  opinion  that 
books  are  for  the  "scholarly"  and  the 
"literary"  alone. 

The  book-buyer,  of  course,  may  go  too 
far  in  his  reaction  against  this  feeling. 
If  he  is  a  man  with  a  hobby  he  may  be- 
come seriously  one-sided  by  following 
too  literally  the  method  of  book-selection 
along  lines  of  personal  interest.  He  may 
find  himself,  for  instance,  collecting  a 
whole  library  on  bee-culture,  or  aviation, 
20 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

or  gardening,  or  pedagogy.  Not  that 
this  in  itself  is  to  be  condemned.  He 
may  do  it ;  but  he  should  not  leave  other 
things  undone.  He  should  search  him- 
self, even  as  if  he  were  apparently  devoid 
of  all  interests,  for  those  germs  of  inter- 
est that  he  must  possess  in  other  direc- 
tions. The  enthusiastic  gardener  will 
be  a  better  man  if  his  library  has  in  it 
well-thumbed  volumes  of  history,  eco- 
nomics or  travel ;  the  mechanic  will  not 
be  harmed  by  a  love  of  the  poets  and  the 
essayists ;  the  man  who  is  crazy  about 
numismatics  will  advantage  himself  by 
the  perusal  of  novels.  Only  —  and  this 
cannot  be  repeated  too  often  —  the  read- 
ing and  the  owning  of  all  these  books 
must  proceed  from  interest  and  not  from 
a  sense  of  duty.  One's  intimate  library 
will  reflect  his  own  personality.  If  he 


THE  MAKING  OF 

is  an  "all-round"  man,  it  will  be  an  "all- 
round"  library;  if  he  is  a  faddist,  it  will 
be  a  faddish  library ;  if  his  tastes  are  in- 
ferior, it  will  be  an  inferior  library.  If 
the  inferior  man  fills  his  room  with  su- 
perior books  and  thinks  that  he  is  "im- 
proving" himself  by  that  act  alone,  he  is 
committing  a  crime  against  himself.  De- 
sire for  improvement  is  commendable, 
but  improvement  should  —  and  it  always 
can  —  proceed  in  the  paths  of  interest. 
The  requirement  that  the  books  in  a 
real,  permanent  library  —  the  books  that 
are  one's  room-mates  —  should  be  inti- 
mate friends,  bars  out,  almost  without 
exception,  the  "complete  works"  of  any 
author  whatever.  When  I  see  on  a 
friend's  shelves,  nicely  bound  "sets"  of 
Dickens,  Thackeray,  Scott  and  George 
Eliot,  I  grieve  —  not  so  much  because  I 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

doubt  his  taste  as  because  he  should  have 
so  erred  in  judgment  as  to  think  that 
his  proper  and  commendable  love  for  the 
immortal  works  of  these  authors  should 
necessitate  his  taking  to  his  bosom  also 
the  balderdash,  the  "pot-boilers,"  the 
failures,  among  their  writings.  It  is  as 
if,  when  you  invite  a  dear  friend,  you 
should  at  the  same  time  ask  all  the  rest 
of  the  village,  including  fools,  criminals 
and  idiots.  Every  man  and  every  book 
should  be  loved  on  his  own  merits. 

Once  in  a  while,  to  be  sure,  we  find 
a  reader  whose  enthusiasm  for  an  author 
is  so  great  as  to  glorify  all  his  inferior 
works.  If  such  a  man  really  loves  every 
bit  that  Stevenson,  or  Pater,  or  Lamb 
ever  wrote,  I  have  nothing  to  say  against 
his  set  of  "works";  but  such  cases  are 
surely  unusual. 

23 


THE  MAKING  OF 

And  if  the  "complete  works"  must  be 
banished,  what  shall  we  say  of  the  for- 
tuitous "set"  —  the  books  forced  to- 
gether, good  and  bad,  put  into  uniform, 
and  placed  on  the  market  in  the  hope  — 
too  often  warranted  —  that  the  good 
will  sell  the  bad?  Shall  we  buy  the 
Great  African  Humorists,  the  Patagonian 
Statesmen,  the  Hawaiian  Scientists?  I 
have  indeed  written  in  vain  if  it  is  nec- 
essary to  waste  space  at  this  point  in 
answering  such  a  question.  These 
"sets,"  absurdly  high-priced,  in  innumer- 
able volumes,  are  rarely  to  be  acquired 
through  the  ordinary  channels  of  trade; 
they  are  sold  by  agents,  through  personal 
solicitation,  and  often  on  the  instalment 
plan,  and  they  have  been  largely  the 
means  of  throwing  an  honourable  pro- 
fession into  disrepute.  Certain  works 
24 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

are  necessarily  and  properly  sold  by 
subscription ;  and  it  is  a  pity  that  it 
has  become  necessary  —  as  it  has  —  to 
warn  the  inexperienced  purchaser  that  he 
must  buy  of  agents  only  after  careful 
consideration  and  the  advice  of  those 
who  know.  In  any  town  where  there 
is  a  public  library  the  telephone  will 
bring  such  advice  willingly  from  the 
librarian. 

I  shall  be  told,  I  am  sure,  that  all  this 
is  very  vague,  especially  as  compared 
with  the  delightful  directness  and  def- 
initeness  of  the  adviser  who  hands  you 
a  list  of  books.  This  is  true.  Original 
work  is  always  more  vague  and  unsatis- 
factory to  a  certain  type  of  mind  than 
imitation.  The  joy  of  copying  can  never 
equal  the  joy  of  creation;  but  it  is 
attained  at  the  expense  of  far  less  energy. 
25 


THE  MAKING  OF 

The  trouble  is  that  no  one  can  tell  his 
neighbour  exactly  how  to  be  original. 
It  may  be  of  interest,  in  closing  these 
words  of  advice  to  prospective  book- 
owners,  to  say  a  word  about  the  decline 
of  private  ownership  of  books,  which 
some  critics  say  is  upon  us.  In  particu- 
lar, we  occasionally  hear  the  complaint 
that  the  public  library,  by  its  free  lending 
of  books,  is  discouraging  the  book-own- 
ing habit.  This  complaint  does  not 
come  from  the  publisher  and  bookseller 
so  often  as  it  did  once;  for  these,  ap- 
parently, are  gradually  accepting  the 
librarian's  point  of  view,  which  is  that 
the  public  library,  by  fostering  the  read- 
ing habit  on  a  large  scale  —  a  vastly 
larger  scale  than  that  on  which  it  can 
offer  the  public  loan  of  books  —  has  been 
also  encouraging  a  commercial  demand 
26 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

for  literature.  And  this  is  doubtless  the 
broader  point  of  view.  The  existence  of 
cheap  restaurants  does  not  lessen  the 
number  of  housekeepers ;  nor  does  the 
free  school  interfere  with  schools  and 
colleges  that  give  education  for  a  fee.  In 
fact,  the  number  of  such  institutions  has 
multiplied  since  the  free  school  came  into 
being.  Create  a  demand  by  creating  or 
stimulating  an  interest,  and  you  have 
created  a  market. 

As  I  have  just  said,  this  broader  view 
is  coming  to  be  accepted  by  the  book 
trade.  But  there  is  an  occasional  scholar, 
one  of  those  who  are,  at  bottom,  doubtful 
of  the  expediency  of  educating  the  masses, 
who  utters  a  belief  that  private  book- 
buying  is  becoming  a  thing  of  the  past, 
owing  to  the  activity  of  the  public  library. 
For  instance,  a  newspaper  writer  recently 
27 


THE  MAKING  OF 

expressed  himself  thus :  "We  are  simply 
doing  our  best  to  pauperise  readers. 
They  know  that  they  do  not  need  to 
buy  books;  a  benevolent  fate  will  pro- 
vide them  gratis ;  and  so  they  go  with- 
out." 

The  question  is,  do  they  go  without? 
The  yearly  reports  of  the  publishing 
houses  do  not  support  such  an  idea.  The 
very  writers  who  bewail  the  influence  of 
the  Library  also  lament  the  flood  of  lit- 
erature, overwhelming  in  its  mass,  how- 
ever light  and  frothy  in  its  quality,  that 
issues  yearly  from  the  presses.  Book- 
sellers will  tell  you  that  comparatively 
little  of  this  goes  to  libraries.  Librarians 
have  for  years  been  striving  vainly  to 
persuade  the  book  trade  that  the  bulk 
of  their  purchases  entitles  them  to  spe- 
cial consideration  in  the  way  of  dis- 
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AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

counts.  We  are  assured  in  return  that 
we  are  wrong  —  that  the  amount  of  our 
purchases,  compared  with  those  that  go 
into  private  hands,  is  inconsiderable. 
There  is  still,  therefore,  a  vast  amount 
of  private  ownership  of  books. 

To  encourage  this  ownership,  to  in- 
crease its  amount  and  to  enhance  its 
quality,  should  be  the  aim  of  every  one 
who  is  interested  in  popular  education, 
and  this  can  best  be  done,  not  by  advis- 
ing purchasers  to  buy  books  about  which 
they  care  nothing,  but  by  pointing  out 
to  them  the  way  to  realise  their  own  per- 
sonal interests,  to  extend  and  expand 
them  by  book-reading  and  book-owner- 
ship, and  so  finally  to  gather  a  collection 
of  books  that  will  be  the  expression  of 
personality  instead  of  merely  the  em- 
bodiment of  somebody's  catalogue. 
29 


THE  MAKING  OF 


II 

The  Art  of  Browsing 

THE  natural  way  to  take  nutriment 
is  as  one  needs  it  and  when  he 
can  get  it.     The  latter  condition 
was    once   of   transcendent   importance, 
but  the  artificial  and  somewhat  abnormal 
plenty   in   which   most   of    us    live   has 
generally  rendered  it  unnecessary.     Over- 
feeding is  now  a  complaint  vastly  more 
prevalent  than  starvation.     Josiah  Flynt 
assures  us  that  any  penniless  tramp  may 
secure  three  square  meals  a  day  for  the 
asking.     He    who    starves    suffers    from 
ignorance  and  lack  of  skill  rather  than 
from  sheer  inability  to  secure  food. 
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AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

Hence  our  arbitrary  system  of  three 
meals  a  day,  at  which  we  often  stuff 
ourselves  when  we  neither  need  nor 
want  to  eat,  while  the  hungry  soul  who 
forages  for  biscuits  and  jam  "between 
meals"  is  sternly  frowned  upon.  When 
we  get  away  from  degenerate  human 
nature,  all  this  ceases.  Animals  have 
no  "meals"  except  when  human  captors 
force  them.  When  the  subjective  con- 
dition —  hunger  —  and  the  objective  — 
food  —  are  both  present,  they  eat ;  that 
is  all  there  is  to  it. 

Fortunately,  when  we  feed  the  intel- 
lectual and  spiritual  man  we  are  still 
on  the  broad  plain  of  free  nutrition.  We 
do,  it  is  true,  catch  our  children  —  poor 
things  —  and  give  them,  in  our  schools, 
intellectual  meals,  that  most  of  them 
take  only  through  forced  feeding.  That, 
31 


THE  MAKING  OF 

however,  does  not  last  long,  and  then 
we  are  free  to  take  our  mental  food 
when  we  like  and  where  we  can. 

It  is  a  sad  fact  that  as  the  instrument 
of  forcible  nutrition  in  schools  is  usually 
the  book,  books  and  all  that  they  con- 
tain are  often  shunned  like  a  plague  by 
the  adult.  Small  wonder;  if  the  goose 
with  a  swollen  liver  should  ever  get 
away  before  he  was  made  into  pate  de 
foie  gras,  do  you  suppose  he  would  re- 
turn to  the  feeding-house  willingly,  or 
that  he  would  ever  look,  except  with 
distaste,  upon  any  of  the  instruments  of 
his  nutritional  torture?  Whatever  may 
be  said  of  our  modern  systems  of  edu- 
cation —  and  I  should  be  the  last  to  decry 
them,  or  to  deny  their  continued  ad- 
vance toward  increased  sanity  and  use- 
fulness —  they  have  surely  not  yet  solved 
32 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

the  problem  of  making  us  in  love  with 
books.  Most  of  us  who  have  this  love 
were  born  with  it,  or  obtained  it  else- 
where than  in  school.  Fortunately  there 
is  time  before  school  and  after  school  — 
not  to  speak  of  during  school  —  to  acquire 
it.  Not  that  those  who  fail  to  do  so 
cease  all  at  once  the  acquirement  of 
mental  food.  We  feed  our  minds  as 
constantly  as  we  do  our  bodies.  The 
man  who  never  sees  a  book  goes  on  ob- 
serving, comparing,  inferring,  elaborat- 
ing his  own  personal  systems  of  science, 
philosophy  and  religion,  learning  how 
to  live  and  forming  his  own  conclusions 
about  the  why  and  whither.  His  mind 
comes  into  contact  with  other  minds  in 
the  street,  at  the  corner  grocery,  in  the 
saloon.  He  can  no  more  help  educat- 
ing himself  than  he  can  help  living.  The 
33 


THE   MAKING  OF 

book  surely  has  no  monopoly  as  an 
instrument  of  education.  Nor  is  there 
aught  magical  about  it.  The  animals 
experimented  with  by  Pawlow,  in  his 
classic  investigations  of  the  digestive 
function,  thought  they  were  eating ;  but 
what  they  took  into  their  mouths  slid 
from  the  esophagus  into  a  tube  and  so 
out  into  the  world  again,  never  to  be 
digested  or  to  be  incorporated  with  the 
organism.  So,  many  readers,  compla- 
cently thinking  that  they  are  feeding 
their  minds,  are  only  admitting  ideas  to 
the  outer  passages  of  their  brains,  whence 
they  slide  out  again  and  are  lost.  Truly, 
it  is  better  to  feed  one's  mind  without 
reading  than  it  is  to  read  without  feeding. 
And  yet,  without  the  book,  one  surely 
misses  something  valuable.  What  we 
miss  is  the  short  cuts,  across  wildernesses 
34 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

of  time  and  space  that  the  unaided  mind 
cannot  traverse.  Ours  is  a  civilisation 
of  accretion,  but  it  needs  some  means 
of  keeping  the  old  fresh  and  vital  as  well 
as  of  bringing  the  new  into  organic 
connection  with  it.  These  short  cuts  to 
the  fountain-heads  of  our  knowledge  we 
get  through  books.  We  need  these  spe- 
cially, in  the  affairs  of  the  mind.  The 
forgotten  Prometheus  who  first  brought 
to  the  cave-dweller  the  gift  of  fire  may 
see  from  some  distant  Olympus  the  ef- 
fect of  that  gift  still  in  the  fulness  of 
its  power  and  use.  But  what  would 
Plato  see,  or  Aristotle  or  Homer,  if  the 
book  had  not  kept  them  alive?  And 
how  many  forgotten  philosophers,  and 
scientists,  and  poets  of  the  days  before 
thought  was  recorded  may  there  have 
been,  of  influence  upon  their  time  and 
35 


THE  MAKING  OF 

through  our  fathers  upon  us  in  some 
distant  degree,  but  wholly  without  pres- 
ent vitality  ?  If  we  are  truly  to  live  the 
mental  life  of  to-day,  we  must  have  food 
of  yesterday  —  and  of  the  day  before. 
Food  of  the  days  long  past,  but  not 
by  force.  Food  that  will  strengthen  be- 
cause we  crave  it  with  the  craving  that 
is  nature's  expression  of  a  need.  There 
are,  it  is  true,  the  cravings  of  deep  emo- 
tion —  of  passion,  which  are  akin  to  those 
of  the  carnivorous  beast  that  pounces  on 
his  prey  and  tears  it,  and  devours  it  all 
at  once.  There  are  also  the  gentler  crav- 
ings of  the  herb-eater  —  the  creature  that 
takes  its  food  here  and  there  and  every- 
where; for  minutes,  or  hours,  or  days, 
as  the  chance  may  offer.  These  are  the 
animals  that  are  of  use  to  man  —  the  ones 
that  he  delights  to  breed,  and  cherish,  and 
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AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

keep  about  him,  the  slow-eating,  thor- 
oughly digesting,  often  ruminating  crea- 
tures. These  love  to  browse  —  and  the 
transfer  of  this  term  to  the  leisurely  cull- 
ing of  mental  food  from  books  gives  rise 
to  one  of  our  most  complete  and  satis- 
fying metaphors.  Forcible  feeding  may 
be  occasionally  necessary,  when  the  mind, 
like  an  incarcerated  suffragette,  insists 
on  starving  itself;  the  mental  orgy  of 
emotion  may  have  its  place  also ;  but  I 
prefer  to  think  of  the  real  book-lover 
as  of  him  who  likes  to  browse  in  the 
broad  pastures  of  literature,  tasting  here 
and  there,  eating  his  fill  when  he  comes 
to  a  good  place,  cleaning  up  whole 
clumps  at  a  time,  perhaps;  moving  on 
when  he  sees  something  better  ahead  and 
ever  stopping  to  ruminate  and  assimilate. 
And  if  we  are  working  animals  — 
37 


THE   MAKING  OF 

draught  oxen  perhaps  —  who  cannot 
browse  all  day,  what  we  have  cropped 
will  still,  beyond  the  threshold  of  our 
consciousness,  be  turning  itself  into  our 
very  substance ;  and  when  our  daily  toil 
intermits  or  is  done,  we  can  return  to 
our  browsing  and  begin,  perhaps,  by 
pulling  off  the  very  tuft  that  we  were 
about  to  crop  when  the  summons  to  la- 
bour called  us  away.  This  browsing 
metaphor  is  so  inexhaustible  that  one  is 
tempted  to  keep  on  using  its  language 
until  a  talk  about  books  seems  turned 
into  a  discourse  on  animal  husbandry. 

"I  have  no  time  to  read,"  says  many 
a  man ;  we  can  all  pick  them  out  here 
and  there  among  our  kinsfolk  and  ac- 
quaintance. A  melancholy  confession ! 
We  all  have  time  to  eat  and  time  to 
sleep;  if  we  ceased  doing  one  or  the 
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AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

other,  our  bodily  machines  would  soon 
stop  working.  And  when  we  cease  to 
feed  and  refresh  our  minds  our  intellec- 
tual machines  will  likewise  stop.  In- 
deed, the  wheels  are  groaning  and  creak- 
ing a  good  deal  in  many  that  we  know. 
But  there  is  a  vast  amount  of  mental 
feeding  and  mental  exercise  outside  of 
books ;  every  one  has  time  for  it  and  so 
keeps  the  rust  out  of  his  brain.  To  say, 
then,  that  one  "has  no  time"  for  read- 
ing is  simply  to  say  that  one  feeds  and 
refreshes  his  mind  wholly  by  contact 
with  his  friends  and  neighbours  and  with 
the  newspaper  record  of  the  day's  poli- 
tics and  scandal  (for  this  seems  not  to 
be  accounted  "reading"  by  our  complain- 
ants). How  great  a  mistake  this  is,  and 
how  the  mind  suffers  from  it,  we  have 
already  seen.  Cut  your  half  hour's  des- 
39 


THE  MAKING  OF 

ultory  gossip  with  Jones  in  two  and  talk 
for  fifteen  minutes  with  Plato,  or  Mill, 
or  even  Arnold  Bennett!  While  you 
ride  from  your  suburb  to  your  work, 
cease  to  gaze  at  the  landscape  that  you 
have  seen  a  thousand  times,  and  cast 
your  eye  on  a  few  printed  paragraphs 
embodying  ideas  that  are  wholly  new  to 
you.  Read  a  lyric  while  you  wait  for 
your  lunch  instead  of  assimilating  the 
signs  that  adjure  you  to  "look  out  for 
your  hat  and  overcoat."  Read,  if  you 
must,  even  while  you  walk;  it  is  quite 
possible,  at  the  cost  of  an  occasional  col- 
lision with  a  stranger  or  a  barked  shin. 
There  are  some  who  sneer  at  such 
casual  mental  exercise  as  "superficial"  — 
a  sadly  misused  word.  We  are  always 
on  the  surface  of  things  —  no  mortal  yet 
has  reached  the  hardpan  of  philosophy. 
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AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

The  only  question  is  whether  our  surface 
shall  be  an  inch  thick,  or  a  hundred 
feet;  and  this  must  be  answered  by  our 
needs.  If  we  try  to  pass  off  our  inch- 
deep  knowledge  for  that  of  a  hundred 
feet  we  are  culpable ;  but .  the  sin  of 
which  we  are  guilty  is  not  superficiality 
but  deceit.  And  so  I  say  to  the  reader : 
If  there  are  three  lyrics  of  Heine  that 
you  love,  you  may  read  them  a  hundred 
times,  if  you  like,  leaving  all  the  others 
unread.  If  you  are  curious  about  Roche- 
foucauld's maxims,  you  may  begin  in  the 
middle  of  the  book  and  pick  out  plums 
wherever  they  catch  your  eye ;  you  shall 
not  be  compelled  to  read  from  cover 
to  cover.  Nay,  you  shall  read  the  mid- 
dle chapter  of  a  history,  or  a  book  of 
travel,  or  a  novel,  and  if  you  like  it  not, 
you  may  abandon  it  then  and  there. 
41 


THE  MAKING  OF 

That  the  browser  may  test  and  reject 
is  one  of  his  dearest  privileges,  and  is 
perhaps  the  very  thing  that  makes  brows- 
ing valuable.  Because  we  have  cropped 
a  leaf  from  a  poisonous  weed,  shall  we 
consider  ourselves  bound  to  consume  all 
the  leaves  of  the  plant  —  or  the  book  ? 
On  the  other  hand,  one  leaf  may  so  fill 
us  with  ecstasy  that  there  is  no  stopping 
while  the  plant  remains  unconsumed. 
And  it  will  be  better  for  your  digestion 
if  you  have  no  time  to  finish  the  whole 
at  a  sitting.  I  know  of  no  greater  joy 
than  the  looking  forward  to  an  hour 
with  a  loved  author,  nor  of  a  more  life- 
empty,  orphaned  feeling  than  the  realisa- 
tion that  you  have  read  all  of  him.  But 
here  is  where  the  mental  feeder  has  the 
advantage  of  the  physical.  For  the  lat- 
ter may  eat  the  same  food  but  once, 
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AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

whereas  the  reader  may  take  his  twice, 
a  dozen,  a  hundred  times.  Blest  are  the 
books  that  please  more  and  more  at  each 
re-reading!  There  are  such  for  every 
man,  though  not  many  for  each.  They 
will  not  stretch  across  a  five-foot  shelf 
by  any  means,  yet  on  a  desert  island  they 
would  be  enough  and  to  spare.  The 
search  for  them  may  well  occupy  a  life- 
time, and  even  if  we  are  so  constituted 
that  we  never  find  them,  in  the  search 
itself  there  is  joy.  We  may  run  across 
many  friends  even  if  we  never  find  a 
sweetheart. 

It  should  not  be  forgotten  that  one 
may  absorb  ideas,  whether  from  books 
or  otherwise,  with  more  than  one  aim, 
and  with  more  than  one  ultimate  result. 
Our  object  may  be  simply  to  increase  the 
store  of  facts  that  we  know.  It  is  in 
43 


THE  MAKING  OF 

this  sense  that  reading,  in  Bacon's  fa- 
miliar words,  "maketh  a  full  man"  —  a 
condition  which  may  or  may  not  be  of 
benefit  to  him.  Or  the  object  may  be 
entertainment  —  from  the  most  trivial 
kind  of  passing  of  the  idle  hour  to  the 
noblest  and  best  forms  of  mental  recrea- 
tion. Or  the  aim  of  our  reading  may 
be  —  more  frequently  the  result  is  gained 
without  conscious  aim  —  to  stir  the 
springs  of  action,  to  set  in  motion  the 
forces  that  mould  character,  better  the 
conditions  of  life,  and  ultimately  ad- 
vance civilisation.  The  sources  of  ideas 
such  as  these,  whether  they  are  men, 
places,  or  books,  we  may  and  do  regard 
with  a  peculiar  affection.  We  may  value 
and  appreciate  that  which  imparts  in- 
formation, but  we  do  not  love  it.  We 
may  seek  and  enjoy  entertainment,  but 
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AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

it  does  not  inspire  us  with  affection.  But 
that  which  stirs  the  soul,  kindles  the 
emotions,  gives  us  faith  to  believe  and 
power  to  do  —  that  is  the  thing  to  love, 
and  when  we  love  books,  it  is  for  the 
inspiration  that  we  find  in  them,  rather 
than  for  either  information  or  recrea- 
tion. And  if  the  kind  of  reading  that 
fools  call  desultory  is  valuable  for 
naught  else,  it  is  of  inestimable  service  as 
a  search  for  books  that  will  thus  inspire 
us. 

Only  by  reading  can  they  be  found; 
for  the  inspirational  book  is  deeply  per- 
sonal. The  strings  within  us  are  tuned 
to  many  keys :  one  may  wander  over 
the  whole  gamut  before  he  finds  just 
the  tone  that  will  thrill  him  and  set 
in  motion  the  invisible  machine  that  has 
been  waiting  a  lifetime  for  precisely  this 
45 


THE  MAKING  OF 

intimate  touch.  This  is  why  browsing 
bears  a  peculiar  relationship  to  bookish 
inspiration.  One  may  browse  also  for 
information  or  for  recreation  —  for  study 
or  for  fun  —  but  it  is  not  necessary.  If 
it  is  desirable  that  you  should  perfect 
yourself  in  spherical  trigonometry  you 
need  not  hunt  through  the  library  before 
picking  out  your  book.  If  you  want  to 
laugh  out  loud  or  to  smile  inside,  you 
may  go  straight  to  your  Twain  or 
Holmes ;  but  if  you  want  the  book  that 
is  for  you  alone  and  for  no  one  else  — 
you  must  hunt  for  it. 

And  the  great  public  library  move- 
ment of  the  past  half  century  means, 
among  various  other  things,  that  the 
people  have  decided  to  provide  and  pay 
for  their  own  mental  and  spiritual  hunt- 
ing grounds.  That  cities  and  towns  by 
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AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

scores  and  hundreds  are  cheerfully  pay- 
ing for  great  collections  of  books,  for 
buildings  to  house  them  and  for  trained 
workers  to  care  for  them  and  make 
them  available,  means  not  only  that  we 
want  to  place  a  particular  book  quickly 
in  the  hands  of  the  man  who  needs  it, 
but  that  we  desire  to  give  opportunity 
for  search  —  freedom  to  the  wanderer 
through  the  realms  of  literature  to  dis- 
cover whatever  therein  may  feed,  or 
soothe,  or  stimulate  him. 

Not  that  the  browser  must  be  always 
searching.  His  may  be  that  joy  of  re- 
tasting,  which  we  have  already  touched 
upon  a  little  while  ago.  Here  he  needs 
no  wide  collection  of  the  world's  litera- 
ture, but  only  his  own  little  intimate 
group  of  room-mates.  It  is  a  curious 
fact  that  even  when  he  can  repeat  from 
47 


THE  MAKING  OF 

memory  some  favourite  bit  of  narrative, 
or  dialogue,  or  description  —  a  scrap  of 
verse,  a  scene  from  a  play,  a  paragraph 
of  satire  —  he  prefers  to  take  down  the 
volume,  turn  to  the  page,  and  let  the 
passage  'enter  the  mind  again  through 
the  eye. 

Those  who  regard  written  language  as 
merely  a  convenience  —  an  arbitrary 
method  of  recording  the  sounds  of  oral 
speech,  should  ponder  this  fact,  and  the 
type  of  facts  that  it  represents.  They 
surely  indicate  that  written  speech  and 
oral  speech,  whatever  their  relationships 
at  the  point  of  origin,  have  in  their  de- 
velopment become  two  distinct  things. 
The  true  book-lover  loves  to  think  that 
when  he  closes  a  volume  of  his  favourite 
author,  he  is  shutting  up  within  it  some- 
thing having  a  closer  connection  with 
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AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

that  author  than  if  its  letters  were 
merely  phonetic  signs  indicating  sounds 
made  by  the  writer  when  he  spoke.  How 
often,  indeed,  were  those  words  never 
spoken  at  all!  They  went  from  the 
writer's  brain  straight  to  the  point  of  his 
pen  and  were  so  spread  on  paper  —  and 
they  lie  in  the  book  even  as  he  penned 
them.  That  is,  they  do,  unless  the  spell- 
ing "reformer"  has  laid  hold  upon  them 
and  mutilated  them !  But  this  is  a  di- 
gression. 

The  re-reading  of  stray  bits  that  one 
loves  is  eminently  fitted  for  odds  and 
ends  of  time.  Here  is  where  the  pocket- 
edition  comes  in.  One  cannot  well  take 
with  him  in  the  trolley  car  or  on  the 
train  the  spreading  quarto,  the  respect- 
able octavo,  or  even  a  fat  duodecimo. 
What  is  needed  is  something  smaller; 
49 


THE  MAKING  OF 

and  here  again  one  must  go  to  the  book- 
store rather  than  to  the  library.  Libra- 
rians frown  upon  the  book  of  pocket 
size,  because  thieves,  as  well  as  honest 
men,  have  pockets.  It  is  an  unfortu- 
nate —  perhaps  a  scandalous  —  fact,  that 
whenever  a  privilege  is  offered  to  the 
public,  scores  will  be  found  to  abuse  it. 
Apparently  there  is  no  middle  ground 
between  exclusion  and  vandalism.  When 
we  unlocked  the  gates  of  our  city  squares, 
there  ensued  the  era  of  trampled  sod 
and  broken  shrubs ;  when  we  tore  down 
the  gratings  from  the  delivery  desks  of 
our  libraries,  unlocked  our  doors  and 
called  the  public  in,  our  books  began  to 
melt  away.  No  one  wants  the  old 
regime  back,  but  this  is  why,  when  one 
seeks  a  convenient  book  for  browsing  on 
the  road,  while  he  may  select  it  at  the 
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AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

library,  he  must  go  to  the  bookstore  for 
his  pocket  edition. 

Perhaps  here  is  the  place  to  point  out 
a  rock  on  which  the  browser  may  run. 
(We  have  not  mixed  our  metaphors, 
for  there  are  rocks  in  the  pasture  as  well 
as  on  the  main,  and  our  feeder  may 
stub  his  toe  in  the  lush  grass.)  Brows- 
ing may  well  fill  the  intervals  when  we 
are  free  to  choose  an  occupation ;  it  is 
not  meritorious  when  superposed  on  what 
we  have  to  do.  I  have  seen  men  reading 
books  at  lunch  —  when  they  were 
actually  masticating  their  food.  I  am 
sure  that  they  both  read  and  ate  badly. 
A  farmer's  daughter,  intellectually  in- 
clined, once  told  me  that  sjie  kept  an 
open  book  on  one  end  of  her  ironing 
board.  "You  can  pick  up  lots  that 
way,"  said  she.  Possibly;  but  how 
51 


THE   MAKING  OF 

about  the  ironing?  I  will  wager  that  it 
suffered.  "Well,  let  it  suffer/'  I  hear 
some  one  say.  Not  so;  it  should  have 
first  consideration ;  and  besides,  the  read- 
ing doubtless  suffered  also.  Napoleon, 
we  are  told,  could  carry  on  more  than 
one  train  of  thought  at  once.  You  who 
are  Napoleons  may  do  likewise;  for  us 
others,  who  are  only  Berangers  or  Bos- 
suets,  it  is  better  to  tackle  only  one  thing 
at  a  time. 

This  is  a  chapter  on  browsing,  and  be- 
cause it  sticks  to  its  subject,  some  read- 
ers will  doubtless  misunderstand  it  and 
believe  that  it  condemns  all  other  kinds 
of  feeding.  There  will  always  be  some 
who  will  interpret  praise  of  the  hills  as 
disparagement  of  the  sea,  and  who  jump 
to  the  conclusion  that  he  who  enjoys 
winter  must  dislike  summer.  We  may 
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AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

love  browsing  and  commend  the 
browser,  but  there  will  always  be  the  too 
facile  wanderer  who  needs  to  be  roped 
to  a  stake  when  he  feeds;  there  will  al- 
ways be  the  barn  where  dry  hay  and 
oats  are  served  instead  of  the  juicy  herb. 
The  master  of  our  art  of  browsing  may 
come  to  love  it  not  wisely  but  too  well. 
If  his  affection  for  it  is  safe  and  sane 
he  will  not  neglect  other  modes  of  feed- 
ing, in  their  proper  place. 

But  no  matter  how  he  may  use  these 
other  modes,  and  no  matter  how  he  may 
value  them,  the  confirmed  browser  will 
always  long  for  the  freedom  of  his  broad 
pasture  and  for  what  that  freedom  in- 
spires. It  may  be  that  he  will  discover 
a  new  author,  and  that  he  will  spend  a 
winter  in  this  author's  company,  read- 
ing book  after  book,  turning  back  and 
53 


THE  MAKING  OF 

re-reading  here  and  there,  feeling  all 
the  while  as  if  a  door  had  opened  to 
him  in  the  blue  sky,  revealing  depths 
undreamed  of  beyond.  The  unthink- 
ing observer,  seeing  him  thus  absorbed, 
might  not  recognise  him  as  a  browser; 
for  browsing,  after  all,  is  not  so  much 
an  act  or  a  method,  as  a  state  of  mind. 
The  non-browser  goes  at  an  author,  or 
a  book,  hammer  and  tongs  from  a  sense 
of  duty.  He  may,  to  be  sure,  go  on 
because  he  likes  it.  He  may  cast  off 
his  shackles  as  he  proceeds,  and  end  as 
a  free  man.  Yet  the  very  fact  that  he 
starts  shackled  is  against  his  success.  He 
purchases  his  freedom  at  a  great  price, 
if  he  gets  it  at  all,  whereas  the  browser, 
like  Paul,  is  free-born. 

I  trust  that  the  connection  of  brows- 
ing  with   what   I   venture   to   call   the 
54 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

American  method  of  selecting  one's  pri- 
vate library  is  sufficiently  apparent.  For 
that  selection  is  made,  first  by  picking 
out  what  we  want  to  read  and,  after  the 
reading,  sorting  out  what  we  desire  to 
re-read.  This  is  browsing,  pure  and 
simple;  and  the  results  are  more  and 
more  satisfactory,  the  broader  the  field 
and  the  more  thoroughly  it  is  covered  by 
the  browser's  wanderings.  Such  intricate 
meanderings  take  time,  and  there  is,  in 
fact,  no  time  to  lose.  I  have  heard  a 
man,  past  middle  age,  bitterly  complain, 
on  discovering  a  book  that  met  his 
fancy,  because  he  had  not  run  across  it 
earlier.  He  had  missed  it  in  his  twist- 
ings  and  turnings  across  the  field  of 
literature,  because  the  web  that  he  was 
thus  weaving  was  of  too  coarse  a  mesh. 
So  there  were  thirty  years,  on  a  con- 
55 


THE  MAKING  OF 

servative  estimate,  irrecoverably  lost,  so 
far  as  that  book  was  concerned.  We  all 
have  losses  of  this  kind  to  lament ;  some 
of  us  will  never  lament,  because  we  shall 
never  discover  them.  In  this  case,  to 
twist  the  old  adage  a  little,  it  is  better  to 
have  lost  and  loved  than  never  to  have 
found  at  all.  Better  still  is  it  to  rise 
early  and  seek.  The  field  is  wide;  it  is 
strewn  with  delicacies,  and  each  may  be 
tasted  by  the  diligent. 

And  how  much  better  it  tastes  when 
it  is  a  little  troublesome  to  find !  How 
much  more  one  enjoys  a  fine  view,  or  a 
wonderful  book,  when  one  is  himself  its 
discoverer !  The  final  enjoyment  is 
often  proportioned  to  the  labour  of  dis- 
covery. It  is  a  mistake  to  make  these 
things  too  easy.  When  a  diner  is  served 
with  perfect  meats  of  nuts,  already  re- 
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AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

moved  from  their  shells,  and  with  seed- 
less raisins  minus  stems,  he  sighs  invol- 
untarily for  the  days  when  he  had  to 
spend  precious  minutes  in  digging  the 
nut  from  its  shell.  Now  he  may  eat  a 
dozen  at  a  time,  if  no  one  is  looking  — 
but  is  that  the  best  way?  I  am  quite 
sure  that  cherries  are  most  luscious  when 
one  stands  on  the  limb  of  the  tree  and 
reaches  for  them  at  the  risk  of  his  life; 
that  blueberries  are  sweetest  in  a  moun- 
tain jungle.  The  effect  is  not  altogether 
imaginary.  Fresh  food  is  surely  more 
satisfying  than  stale,  and  berries,  or 
ideas,  are  fresher  when  one  comes  upon 
them  unprepared,  as  he  does  when  he  is 
browsing. 

I  sometimes  think  that  we  librarians 
have  overdone  a  little  our  work  of  ad- 
vice, and  preparation,  and  predigestion, 
57 


THE  MAKING  OF 

especially  when  we  have  children  to  deal 
with.  Let  us  go  over  our  pasture  care- 
fully to  pluck  out  all  poisonous  weeds  — 
and  even  all  indigestible  ones,  if  you 
like ;  though  nutriment  and  sweet  savour 
often  lurk  beneath  a  tough  stem  —  and 
then  let  us  encourage  browsing!  For 
one  cannot  begin  it  too  young. 

Much  of  what  we  are  wont  to  con- 
sider as  creation  is  merely  selection  and 
arrangement.  With  the  same  stock  of 
materials  to  draw  upon,  one  man  will 
build  a  beautiful  and  useful  house,  an- 
other an  ugly  and  inconvenient  one. 
Living  in  the  same  world,  and  coming 
into  contact  with  the  same  impressions, 
one  man  will  build  a  fine  character  and 
another  a  despicable  one.  We  must  all 
select  our  own  materials  and  put  them 
together  in  our  own  way.  The  gift  of 
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AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

written  speech  ensures  that  we  shall  not 
be  limited  to  .the  here  and  the  now  in 
our  selection  of  elements  for  the  build- 
ing of  mind  and  character.  We  can  use 
the  ideas  of  Socrates  or  Seneca  together 
with  those  that  we  pick  up  on  the  street 
or  in  the  club ;  we  can  supplement  our 
American  notions  with  others  from  Rus- 
sia, or  Arabia,  or  China.  The  pasture 
from  which  we  crop  has  been  wonder- 
fully expanded  in  space  and  in  time.  He 
who  goes  farthest  afield  and  is  the  most 
catholic  in  his  selection  —  he  who  most 
thoroughly  incorporates  together  what  he 
gathers,  by  chewing  the  cud  of  reflec- 
tion —  he  whose  normal  digestive  power 
makes  it  all  part  of  his  own  organism  — 
he  is  the  most  successful  browser. 

We  should  never  forget  those  last  two 
processes.     No  matter  how  widely  a  man 
59 


THE  MAKING  OF 

may  range  through  time  and  space  to 
cull  the  best  from  the  master  minds  of 
all  eras  and  all  countries,  if  he  has  not 
the  ability  to  fit  the  bits  of  his  mosaic 
together  into  an  intelligible  pattern,  and 
if  he  cannot  make  this  pattern  a  part 
of  his  own  personal  mental  organism, 
so  that  his  thoughts,  and  his  attitudes, 
and  his  outlook  shall  be  his  own  instead 
of  a  patchwork  of  other  men's  —  if  he 
cannot  do  this,  wide  though  his  pasture 
be,  and  full  of  good  things,  yet  he  has 
browsed  in  vain. 


60 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 


III 

A  Literary  Laboratory 

ONE    might    think,    to    listen    to 
some    current    comment,    that 
the  public  library  is  an  institu- 
tion intended  to  make  the  private  owner- 
ship of  books  unnecessary.     Were  it  so, 
there  would  be  little  excuse  for  its  exist- 
ence —  still  less  for  supporting  it  from 
the  public  funds.     A  man's  books  should 
be  as  close  to  him  as  his  clothes,  and 
there  is  no  more  reason   for  collecting 
them  all  in   a  central   depository   than 
there  would  be  for  creating  a  public  cloth- 
ing warehouse,   whence    particular    gar- 
ments could  be  borrowed  by  individuals. 
61 


THE  MAKING  OF 

The  public  book  collection  is  not  in- 
tended as  a  substitute  for  the  private 
library,  nor  does  it  so  act.  It  may  rather 
be  described  as  an  institution  one  of 
whose  chief  functions  is  to  make  pos- 
sible a  sane  and  well-considered  private 
ownership.  Some  of  its  books,  it  is  true, 
are  too  rare,  or  too  large,  or  too  expen- 
sive for  the  private  owner  to  consider 
them  as  possibilities  for  his  own  library. 
Most  of  the  others,  too,  are  books  that 
he  would  scarcely  choose  for  intimate, 
permanent  companionship.  And  yet 
there  are  potentialities  in  such  a  large 
collection,  and  the  larger  it  is,  the 
greater  becomes  the  chance  of  making 
friends  in  it  —  of  being  able  to  choose 
from  it  the  few  intimates  that  are  to  be 
the  joy  of  the  book-owner's  lifetime. 

Such  a  use  of  a  public  collection  of 
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AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

books  is  peculiarly  modern,  and  it  em- 
bodies the  modern  idea  of  a  live,  as  op- 
posed to  a  dead,  literature.  The  desire 
of  the  book-lover  in  every  age  has  been 
to  care  for  the  book  —  to  shield  it  from 
physical  harm,  so  that  his  children,  and 
his  children's  children,  should  be  able  to 
take  the  same  pleasure  in  it  that  he  him- 
self had  taken.  But  in  the  old  days,  the 
book,  regarded  as  a  dead  thing,  was  pre- 
served by  seclusion,  whereas  now  it  is 
looked  upon  as  alive,  and  is  kept  alive 
by  dissemination. 

An  object  without  life,  such  as  a  min- 
eral or  a  fossil,  is  best  kept  from  harm 
by  locking  it  in  a  case.  But  the  preser- 
vation of  a  living  thing,  or  the  germ  of 
a  living  thing,  is  quite  a  different  mat- 
ter. What  is  the  best  way  to  ensure 
that  the  men  of  a  thousand  years  hence 
63 


THE   MAKING  OF 

shall  have  a  sufficient  quantity  of  corn, 
and  peas,  and  beans?  Shall  we  collect 
all  we  can  and  put  them  into  cold  stor- 
age? Shall  we  not  rather  distribute 
them  as  widely  as  possible  in  good  soil, 
and  raise  crops  ?  That  is  what  the  mod- 
ern library  is  doing  with  literature  — 
treating  it  as  seed,  and  therefore  dis- 
tributing it  as  widely  as  possible.  The 
edition  of  Shakespeare  that  your  descen- 
dant of  centuries  hence  is  to  hold  in  his 
hand  will  not  be  any  edition  now  extant, 
but  a  copy  of  a  copy  of  a  copy.  The 
fate  of  literature  is  closely  interwoven 
with  the  fate  of  the  race.  If  the  race  is 
to  deteriorate,  so  that  it  no  longer  ap- 
preciates Shakespeare,  his  works  will 
vanish,  except  for  a  few  musty  tomes 
kept  as  curiosities. 

What  we  are  doing  is  to  give  every 
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AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

writer  a  fair  chance.  This  has  not  al- 
ways been  done  in  the  past  —  it  is  not 
always  done  to-day.  It  has  happened 
again  and  again  that  the  works  of  an  au- 
thor, long  issued,  but  little  read,  have 
suddenly  become  the  fashion  and  have 
taken  a  new  lease  of  life,  so  that  it  has 
been  necessary  to  print  edition  after  edi- 
tion to  meet  the  popular  demand.  This 
is  because  at  first  the  books  did  not  fall 
into  the  hands  of  those  who  would  like 
and  appreciate  them.  The  library,  with 
its  ever-multiplying  methods  of  reach- 
ing the  public,  does  all  that  it  can  to 
remedy  such  a  state  of  things. 

Not  long  ago  the  writer  of  an  article 
in  one  of  our  most  popular  magazines 
asserted  that  the  devices  used  to-day  by 
public  libraries  to  bring  the  man  and  the 
book  together,  were  born  of  despair, 
65 


THE  MAKING  OF 

caused  by  waning  circulation.  Readers 
were  falling  off  and  it  had  become  neces- 
sary, we  were  told,  to  attract  and  stimu- 
late them  in  all  sorts  of  abnormal  ways. 
This  is  so  far  from  the  truth  as  to  be 
laughable.  Librarians  have  been  lit- 
erally forced  into  these  methods,  often 
sorely  against  their  will,  by  outside  pres- 
sure from  the  public.  Scarcely  one  of 
the  methods  of  distributing  books,  or  of 
widening  their  use,  now  in  vogue  has 
been  adopted  at  first  by  general  consent. 
Branch  libraries,  free  access  to  the 
shelves,  special  rooms  for  children,  inter- 
library  loans,  lectures  and  exhibitions  in 
library  buildings,  co-operation  with  the 
schools  —  each  plan  was  strenuously  op- 
posed at  its  introduction  by  eminent  and 
representative  librarians.  Each  has  won 
its  way,  not  because  it  was  needed  to 
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AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

bolster  up  a  waning  circulation,  but  be- 
cause the  public  liked  it,  and  demanded 
it,  and  would  not  be  gainsaid.  Evi- 
dently the  public  likes  literature,  as  it 
likes  corn  and  beans,  and  approves  of  the 
method  of  preservation  by  popularisation 
—  by  successive  sowings  and  reapings. 

The  library  has  used,  and  will  con- 
tinue to  use,  measures  of  publicity;  it 
appreciates,  in  other  words,  the  value  of 
advertising.  Yet  the  best  advertiser  is 
he  who  has  something  good  for  others 
and  who  simply  disseminates  the  facts 
as  widely  as  possible.  Didacticism  has 
seldom  been  successful  in  the  library ; 
apt  presentation  and  spreading  of  facts 
almost  always  bring  results. 

When  these  measures  come  to  their 
complete  fruitage,  every  community  will 
have  an  adequate  opportunity  to  jexam- 
67 


THE  MAKING  OF 

ine  a  wide  literary  field,  to  test  its  likes 
and  dislikes,  to  form  its  tastes,  to  make 
literary  acquaintances,  friends  and  inti- 
mates, to  worship  its  literary  heroes. 
Literature  is  life.  We  must  all  live,  and 
we  cannot  help  making  contact  with  the 
life  of  others.  Literature  simply  ensures 
that  such  contact  shall  be  with  the 
world's  life  instead  of  that  of  our  own 
little  parish  —  with  the  life  of  the  ages 
instead  of  that  of  a  brief  day  and  hour. 
Does  this  mean  that  we  need  buy  no 
more  books  ?  Only  to  those  who  get  no 
reaction  from  these  age-long  and  world- 
wide contacts.  If  you  can  spend  your 
life  in  a  public  collection  of  books  and 
never  handle  one  that  you  covet,  the 
public  collection  may  be  enough  for  you. 
But  experience  does  not  indicate  that  this 
is  the  way  things  work  out.  By  noth- 
68 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

ing  is  the  desire  for  personal  possession 
so  quickened  and  aroused  as  by  books. 
If  the  reader  is  dishonest  this  results  in 
theft,  as  the  libraries  know  to  their  cost. 
Large  libraries  lose  in  this  way  thou- 
sands of  volumes  yearly.  Very  few  of 
these  are  ever  recovered  through  the 
channels  of  commerce  and  probably  only 
a  small  percentage  is  sold.  They  were 
not  taken  to  be  sold  but  to  be  kept.  The 
thief  was  a  book-lover  tempted  beyond 
his  power  of  resistance  —  this  is  all.  Had 
he  the  means,  he  might  have  gone  to 
the  nearest  bookstore  to  buy  a  copy  of 
the  book  instead  of  appropriating  the 
library's  property.  And  for  every  man 
who  is  thus  tempted  to  steal  a  book, 
there  must  be  hundreds  who  are  induced 
to  buy  one,  in  the  proportion  of  honest 
to  dishonest  book-lovers  in  the  commu- 
69 


THE  MAKING  OF 

nity.  We  have  record  of  the  thefts  so 
induced,  but  not  of  the  purchases.  If 
we  assume  that  in  a  city  from  whose 
public  library  one  thousand  books  are 
stolen  yearly,  there  are  one  hundred 
honest  book-lovers  to  one  dishonest  one 
(and  Heaven  help  the  place  in  which 
there  are  not  more  than  this),  then  the 
library  must  stimulate  the  purchase  of 
a  hundred  thousand  volumes  yearly.  In 
so  doing  it  is  but  fulfilling  its  mission 
of  sowing  literature  broadcast.  So  it 
comes  about  that  the  public  library,  be- 
sides its  various  other  functions  on  which 
we  need  not  touch  here,  has  become 
adapted  to  serve,  and  does  in  fact  serve, 
as  the  testing  laboratory  for  book-pur- 
chasers. The  tests  may  be  purely  em- 
pirical, like  those  employed  by  Edison, 
who,  if  reports  are  true,  has  made  some 
70 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

of  his  greatest  discoveries  simply  by 
accumulating  a  vast  store  of  materials  or 
of  chemical  reagents  and  patiently  trying 
one  after  the  other  until  he  finds  one  that 
will  best  serve  the  particular  purpose  that 
he  has  in  mind.  I  imagine,  however,  that 
even  in  this  case  there  is  some  preliminary 
exclusion,  made  not  from  actual  trial  but 
by  reliance  on  the  recorded  experience  of 
others.  One  of  Edison's  great  finds  was 
the  carbonised  strip  of  bamboo  for  the 
incandescent  lamp,  which  he  is  said  to 
have  obtained  in  the  manner  described 
above.  Here  he  must  have  limited  his 
tests  to  substances  that  appeared  likely 
to  serve ;  it  is  not  probable  that  he  tried 
limestone,  or  steel,  or  molasses.  And 
even  in  the  case  of  the  man  most  ignorant 
of  literature,  it  is  hardly  probable  that 
he  would  find  it  necessary  in  his  prelimi- 
71 


THE  MAKING  OF 

nary  tests  to  begin  with  the  bibliographi- 
cal titles  and  work  down  through  the 
whole  classification.  His  object  is  as 
clear  as  Edison's  was,  although  it  may 
not  be  as  definite.  He  wants  books  for  his 
collection  of  room-mates,  and  he  has  some 
vague  idea,  at  any  rate,  of  the  kind  of 
companions  that  he  would  be  likely  to 
cherish  most. 

We  have  seen  how  well  adapted  the 
public  library  is  for  this  kind  of  pre- 
liminary testing,  and  how  the  would-be 
purchaser  —  sometimes  unconsciously, 
perhaps  —  does  in  fact  make  just  this 
kind  of  use  of  it,  It  does  not  follow 
that  librarians  as  a  class  fully  realise  this 
function  of  their  collections  or  actively 
aid  it.  When  the  widow  announced  to 
her  little  son  that  she  was  about  to  give 
him  a  step-father,  in  the  person  of  Mr. 
72 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

Jones,  he  replied  with  enthusiasm : 
"Bully  for  you,  Ma !  does  Mr.  Jones  know 
it?"  Knowledge  of  the  part  that  he  was 
about  to  play  was  doubtless  necessary  in 
the  case  of  Mr.  Jones.  It  is  not  so  in- 
dispensable in  the  case  of  the  librarian. 
Sometimes  he  thinks  he  is  merely  the 
curator  of  a  large  collection  of  literary 
specimens.  He  knows  that  scholars 
come  to  peer  at  them,  and  measure 
them,  and  even  to  borrow  them  for 
closer  inspection ;  but  he  has  no  con- 
ception of  the  degree  to  which  they  can 
be  used,  and  are  being  used,  as  a  kind  of 
huge  sales  catalogue.  The  use  may  and 
does  go  on,  without  his  knowledge,  but  it 
will  go  on  more  widely  and  to  vastly  bet- 
ter advantage  if  he  wakes  up  and  con- 
sciously furthers  what  he  has  before  only 
blindly  refrained  from  interfering  with. 
73 


THE  MAKING  OF 

There  are  already  plenty  of  instances 
where  the  situation  is  realised  and  ac- 
tion taken  accordingly.  Librarians  are 
not  perhaps  generally  recognised  as  the 
book-purchasing  experts  of  the  com- 
munity. Many  of  them  would  be 
surprised,  perhaps,  at  receiving  large 
numbers  of  requests  about  prices,  and 
editions,  and  dealers.  Yet  the  belief  is 
growing,  both  among  librarians  and 
among  the  public  whom  they  serve,  that 
this  particular  kind  of  service  is  ger- 
mane to  the  library's  function,  and  that, 
as  a  perfectly  neutral  and  unprejudiced 
outsider,  it  is  better  fitted  to  act  as  ad- 
viser in  matters  of  book-purchase  than  is 
the  dealer  himself.  Indeed,  this  is  only 
one  more  instance  of  the  library's  growth 
of  influence  through  its  commanding 
position  of  neutrality.  It  places  on  its 
74 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

shelves  books  on  both  sides  of  all  sorts 
of  controverted  questions.  It  welcomes 
Jew  and  Gentile,  Protestant  and  Cath- 
olic, Democrat  and  Republican,  Capital- 
ist and  Labour  Unionist.  There  is  no 
danger  that  when  you  ask  for  books  on 
the  tariff  it  will  load  you  with  either 
free- trade  or  protectionist  literature. 
Propaganda  is  the  one  word  that  is  not 
in  its  dictionary.  This  makes  it  a  haven 
of  rest  for  the  weary  soul  who  is  sorely 
beset  on  all  sides  with  attempts  to  con- 
vert him  to  some  ism  or  other.  It  should 
be,  and  is  rapidly  becoming,  a  refuge  for 
the  bewildered  book-buyer,  who  is  loudly 
importuned  on  the  one  hand  to  buy 
foolishly  expensive  editions  and  on  the 
other  to  invest  in  "series"  and  "sets" 
and  "complete  works"  without  end. 
Which  is  the  best  cyclopedia  ?  The  agent 
75 


THE  MAKING  OF 

will  tell  you  that  it  is  his,  everywhere 
and  always.  The  librarian  will  ask  you 
just  for  what  purpose  you  require  it,  and 
advise  you  accordingly.  What  are  the 
best  picture-books  to  buy  for  your  chil- 
dren ?  You  may  see  them  at  the  library ; 
and  the  assistant  in  the  children's  room 
will  tell  you  which  will  suit  your  needs. 
The  library,  in  fact,  may  save  its  book- 
buying  public  time  and  money  and 
mortification,  simply  by  giving  to  in- 
quirers the  information  that  it  possesses 
—  that  its  business  is  to  possess  —  but 
that  it  too  often  keeps  ignorantly  or 
passively  to  itself. 

Many  years  ago,  Dr.  Melvil  Dewey, 
in  whose  fertile  brain  so  many  good  li- 
brary ideas  seem  to  have  sprouted  long 
before  others  recognised  their  impor- 
tance, suggested  that  the  library  might 
76 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

even,  in  the  future,  actually  sell  books 
to  its  users.  In  a  day  when  it  was  con- 
sidered improper  for  a  library  even  to 
let  its  readers  know  the  price  of  a  book, 
still  more  so  to  betray  the  place  where 
it  might  be  obtained  by  purchase,  this 
suggestion  was  received  by  one  type  of 
mind  in  awestruck  silence  and  by  an- 
other with  whistles  of  derision.  And 
yet  to-day  we  find  the  most  progressive 
libraries  furnishing  their  readers  with  all 
the  information  necessary  for  the  pur- 
chase of  books,  displaying  the  volumes 
themselves,  recommending  editions,  stat- 
ing clearly  prices,  publishers  and  book- 
sellers. 

This,  it  seems  to  me,  is  as  far  as  the 

library  is  likely  to  go  in  the  direction  of 

Dr.     Dewey's     interesting     suggestion. 

Possibly  it  is  as  far  as  he  himself  in- 

77 


THE  MAKING  OF 

tended.  The  one  additional  step,  of  it- 
self receiving  money  for  the  book,  in- 
stead of  merely  indicating  where  it  may 
be  bought,  is  just  the  step  that  would 
take  the  library  out  of  the  position  of 
neutrality  that  is  one  of  the  chief  sources 
of  its  influence.  The  moment  it  should 
say  "buy  of  me!"  it  would  become  an 
interested  party,  and  its  advice  would 
cease  to  be  of  value. 

Libraries  have  probably  gone  farthest 
in  this  new  function  of  advice  in  book- 
purchase,  at  the  holiday  season,  when 
many  of  them  hold  exhibits  of  books 
recommended  for  Christmas  presents. 
This  has  been  most  widely  done  with 
children's  books,  and  the  service  to 
perplexed  parents  has  been  great,  as  well 
as  that  to  the  cause  of  general  education. 
In  the  St.  Louis  Public  Library  an  ex- 
78 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

hibit  of  Christmas  gifts  of  books  for 
adults  has  been  held  in  several  successive 
years,  the  books  being  classified  according 
to  the  nature  of  the  intended  recipient, 
as  "Books  for  the  Busy,"  "For  Lovers 
of  Outdoors,"  "For  Amateur  Actors," 
"For  Housewives,"  "For  Sportsmen," 
and  so  on. 

That  such  exhibitions  need  not  be 
limited  to  the  holiday  season  is  obvious. 
Already  some  publishers  and  vendors  of 
books  on  special  subjects  are  issuing  neat 
lists  of  these  books,  with  prices  and  other 
information,  in  such  form  that  the  libraries 
need  not  hesitate  to  accept  and  distrib- 
ute them.  Others,  less  astute,  have 
overstepped  the  line  that  separates  li- 
brary information  from  advertising,  and 
their  compilations  cannot  be  used.  Ulti- 
mately, doubtless,  a  great  deal  of  the 
79 


THE   MAKING  OF 

money  that  now  goes  into  forms  of  book- 
advertising  suitable  chiefly  for  the  li- 
brarian's waste-paper  basket  will  be 
diverted  in  a  direction  where  publisher, 
book-seller,  library  and  the  reading  pub- 
lic will  all  benefit  by  it. 

Indeed,  we  may  go  further,  and  look 
forward  to  the  time  when  many  of  our 
large  libraries  will  serve  as  general  ex- 
hibition rooms  for  the  combined  book- 
trade  of  the  country.  No  library  can 
afford  to  buy  all  the  books  that  are  pub- 
lished, or  more  than  a  small  part  of 
them.  There  are  few  bookstores  in  the 
country  —  none,  except  in  the  largest  cit- 
ies, where  one  may  be  sure  to  find  every- 
thing of  value  as  soon  as  it  leaves  the 
press.  It  would  seem  to  be  to  the  ad- 
vantage of  both  publishers  and  the  book 
trade  to  place  on  deposit  in  certain  se- 
80 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

lected  large  libraries  a  copy  of  each  pub- 
lished book  with  the  same  regularity  as 
these  are  sent  to  the  copyright  office  in 
Washington.  These  loans  would  nat- 
urally be  kept  together  in  an  accessible 
place  for  a  stated  period  of  time  —  say 
one  year  —  and  could  then  be  disposed  of 
as  might  be  agreed.  They  might  be  re- 
turned to  the  lenders,  or  the  library 
might  be  given  the  option  of  purchasing 
such  as  it  might  want,  at  a  reduced 
price,  or  they  might  be  allowed  to  re- 
main as  a  permanent  reference  deposit. 
Each  volume  would  be  marked  with  its 
price  and  with  a  list  of  the  bookstores,  in 
the  home  city,  where  it  could  be  ob- 
tained. Book-lovers  would  soon  come  to 
realise  that  they  could  inspect  all  new 
books  at  the  public  library,  whether  the 
library  could  purchase  them  or  not,  and 
81 


THE  MAKING  OF 

publishers  would  secure  the  very  best 
possible  exhibition-room  for  their  sam- 
ples, absolutely  without  cost.  The 
advantage  to  the  library  would  be 
obvious. 

That  the  book-trade  is  beginning  to 
realise  the  part  that  the  library  may  play 
as  its  chief  feeder,  is  strikingly  shown  by 
the  attention  that  it  is  giving  to  the 
monthly  Booklist  of  the  American  Li- 
brary Association  —  the  organ  through 
which  the  national  organisation  of  libra- 
rians advises  its  members,  particularly 
the  small  rural  libraries  that  are  badly 
in  need  of  such  advice,  regarding  the 
suitability,  for  library  purchase,  of  Jthe 
month's  literary  output.  Inclusion  in 
the  Booklist  is  coming  to  be  regarded  as 
a  special  mark  of  commendation.  Such 
inclusion  is  heralded  in  publishers'  adver- 
82 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

tisements,  and  whenever  the  publications 
of  one  firm  constitute  the  majority  of 
entries,  that  firm  is  apt  to  announce  the 
fact  publicly  with  considerable  pride.  A 
dozen  years  ago  or  so,  before  this  publi- 
cation had  been  thought  of,  the  writer 
suggested,  in  a  meeting  of  librarians, 
that  as  book  reviews  were  not  generally 
written  from  the  library's  standpoint,  we 
needed  our  own  critical  publication  in 
which  the  particular  availability  of  each 
book  for  library  use  should  be  duly  set 
forth.  This  suggestion  seemed  to  meet 
with  disfavour;  but  in  the  Booklist 
we  now  have  precisely  such  a  pub- 
lication. 

The  same  attitude  of  neutrality  that 

has  been  emphasised  above  as  a  library 

asset  is,  of  course,  the  thing  that  makes 

commendation  by  this  official  organ  of 

83 


THE  MAKING  OF 

librarians  so  valuable.  There  is  no 
reason  why  its  value  should  not  com- 
mend it  to  the  general  public  as  well  as 
to  librarians.  A  little  effort  to  adapt  it 
to  that  public,  possibly  by  a  change  of 
name  and  of  physical  make-up,  and  the 
supplementing  of  its  notices  by  exhibi- 
tions of  the  noticed  books  themselves, 
in  library  buildings,  would  be  great 
steps  toward  the  end  already  indicated  — 
the  complete  recognition,  by  the  book- 
trade  and  the  public,  of  the  library's 
function  as  a  testing  laboratory  for  book- 
buyers.  Even  if  publishers  should  hesi- 
tate to  place  on  deposit  copies  of  all  their 
books,  they  might  at  least  make  a  begin- 
ning by  displaying  in  libraries  those  pub- 
lications that  have  been  accorded  public 
praise  by  the  critical  organ  of  the  li- 
braries themselves.  If  copies  are  sent 
84 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

freely  to  the  office  of  the  Booklist  for 
examination,  with  absolutely  no  guar- 
anty of  notice,  it  would  seem  to  be  even 
better  business  policy  to  send  them,  for 
certain  display,  to  a  large  library;  and 
at  any  rate,  volumes  already  favourably 
noticed  in  the  Booklist  might  be  so 
sent. 

These  suggestions  look  toward  mak- 
ing the  resources  of  our  laboratory  more 
complete  in  the  direction  of  current  lit- 
erature ;  but  of  course  this  is  not  the 
place  to  put  the  emphasis.  Even  with- 
out such  co-operation  with  the  book- 
trade,  large  libraries  include  all  the 
books  that  the  world  has  loved,  and  most 
of  those  that  the  average  book-buyer  is 
likely  to  take  into  his  heart.  He  can 
make  his  selection  from  what  he  finds 
there,  and  the  lack  of  a  few  thousands  of 
85 


THE  MAKING  OF 

last  year's  books,  and  those  of  the  year- 
before,  will  not  irk  him. 

The  Public  Library,  in  its  present 
form,  has  taken  shape  and  has  expanded 
to  great  proportions  within  a  brief  tale 
of  years.  This  expansion,  in  the  demo- 
cratic conditions  under  which  it  has 
taken  place,  is  the  best  possible  proof  that 
the  library  has  filled  a  popular  need  — 
that  is,  unless  we  are  to  suppose  that  it 
has  skilfully  blinded  the  people  to  its 
real  aims  and  value.  But  there  are  some 
persons  in  whose  minds  success  always 
presupposes  doubtful  methods.  From 
these  we  hear  occasionally  either  that  the 
library  is  going  beyond  its  province,  or 
that  its  work  has  been  artificially  stimu- 
lated in  some  way,  or  even  that  the 
whole  programme  of  public  support  on 
which  it  is  proceeding  is  fundamentally 
86 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

wrong.  Even  so  clear-headed  a  thinker 
as  the  late  Goldwin  Smith  said  of  its 
work  that  he  believed  it  no  more  the 
duty  of  the  municipality  to  furnish  citi- 
zens free  books  than  to  provide  them 
with  free  clothes.  The  obvious  answer 
to  this  is  that  free  books  are  an  element 
in  popular  education,  while  free  clothes 
are  not.  The  trouble  with  Mr.  Smith, 
however,  and  with  those  who,  like  him, 
think  either  that  the  public  library  is  not 
minding  its  own  business,  or  that  the 
business  itself  is  not  a  proper  one  for 
the  public  to  carry  on  —  the  trouble  is 
that  theirs  is  a  limited  view;  they  are 
scrutinising  the  trees  so  closely  that  they 
do  not  see  the  forest.  The  whole  is  not 
merely  the  sum  of  its  parts,  where  those 
parts  are  inter-related,  any  more  than 
the  properties  of  water  are  merely  those 
87 


THE  MAKING  OF 

of  its  component  gases.  We  cannot  pre- 
dict the  services  that  a  collection  of  books 
may  render,  simply  by  adding  together 
the  possible  values  of  its  units.  Every 
collector  knows  that  the  chief  worth  of 
a  group  of  objects  often  resides  in  the 
fact  that  it  is  a  group,  apart  from  the 
characteristics  of  the  objects  separately. 
So  with  the  library.  We  might  —  al- 
though we  decidedly  do  not  —  agree  with 
Goldwin  Smith  that  it  is  an  impropriety 
for  the  public  to  furnish  an  individual 
man  with  an  individual  book,  and  yet 
we  might  continue  to  assert  the  propriety 
of  providing  for  that  man  and  his  fel- 
lows a  collection  of  books. 

One  of  the  things  that  a  collection  can 
do,  as  a  collection,  I  have  tried  to  empha- 
sise in  what  has  just  been  said.     It  is  on 
functions  of  this  kind  that  the  library 
88 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

must  rely,  in  the  end,  if  it  is  to  justify 
its  existence  and  its  support  from  the 
public  funds.  Otherwise  we  shall  have 
to  admire  the  plan  of  the  Philadelphia 
alderman  who  proposed  to  cut  off  all 
library  appropriations  for  buildings  and 
staff,  spend  all  the  library  money  for 
books,  dump  them  on  the  City  Hall 
floor  and  let  the  public  carry  them  off 
ad  libitum.  Such  a  collection  would  be 
worth  precisely  as  much  as  the  sum  of 
its  components ;  it  is  the  arrangement, 
the  cataloguing,  the  environment,  the 
trained  assistance,  that  make  it  a  library 
instead  of  a  hodge-podge;  and  all  these 
make  possible  its  use,  as  a  testing 
laboratory  for  literature,  by  every  citizen 
who  realises  what  he  may  gain  by  such 
use.  It  is  thus  as  a  library,  with  all  that 
the  name  implies,  instead  of  as  a  mere 
89 


THE  MAKING  OF 

mass  of  volumes  in  juxtaposition,  that  a 
public  collection  properly  performs  its 
greatest  public  service  and  should  make 
its  most  effective  appeal  to  the  public 
mind  and  purse. 


90 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 


IV 

The  Boy  and  the  Book 


JT"  r^HERE  is  no  minimum  age  for 
the  book-lover  or  for  the  book- 
owner.  One  may,  and  should, 
begin  to  love  books  before  he  knows 
how  to  read.  To  such  children  read- 
ing comes  naturally,  like  speaking. 
They  need  no  formal  instruction  in 
it  —  or  rather,  their  training  began,  as 
Dr.  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  said  it  should, 
"a  hundred  years  before  they  were  born." 
And  if,  as  the  writer  of  these  chapters  has 
been  impressing  upon  his  readers,  a  book 
owned  should  be  a  book  loved,  so  that 
one's  library  is  a  group  of  intimates,  not 
91 


THE  MAKING  OF 

a  throng  of  strangers,  the  boy  and  the 
girl  should  begin  early  to  lay  the  founda- 
tions of  such  a  collection,  and  to  lay  it 
in  the  right  way. 

The  book  intended  for  children's  read- 
ing alone  is  a  thing  of  recent  date,  and 
its  inclusion  in  the  public  library  is  still 
more  recent.  A  thing  of  yesterday  is  the 
special  attention,  given  to  children  and 
their  reading,  that  we  now  find  in  every 
up-to-date  library  —  there  was,  therefore, 
until  very  recently,  no  such  opportunity 
to  survey  the  field  and  to  pick  favourites 
for  purchase,  as  is  now  offered  to  chil- 
dren. Even  now  there  is  too  little  of 
what  I  have  called  the  "laboratory"  use 
of  the  children's  collection  in  a  large 
library,  the  reason  being  that  the  users 
of  that  collection  are  not  the  purchasers 
of  their  own  books.  Children's  books  are 
92 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

commonly  gifts  from  their  elders;  and 
in  too  many  cases  their  elders  are  willing 
to  take  on  trust,  especially  just  before 
Christmas,  anything  that  is  offered  them 
as  a  "juvenile."  The  results  have  been 
unsatisfactory.  One  of  them  is  that  we 
have  too  many  "books  for  children."  In 
many  cases  the  child  easily  reads  and  en- 
joys the  same  books  as  his  elders.  In- 
telligent children  do  not  like  being 
"talked  down  to,"  or  "written  down  to." 
It  is  possible,  however,  to  make  the  op- 
posite mistake  of  giving  children  books  to 
read  that  they  find  dull  or  unintelligible, 
just  because  the  treatment  is  unsuited  for 
the  child's  particular  stage  of  mental  de- 
velopment. It  is  possible  to  arouse  in 
this  way  a  distaste  for  what  is  good  that 
may  have  long-continued  or  far-reaching 
influences  for  evil. 

93 


THE  MAKING  OF/ 

In  my  eleventh  year  I  assisted  at  the 
establishment  of  a  library  in  a  New  Eng- 
land town.  So  far  as  I  can  remember, 
the  idea  that  it  might  contain  books  for 
children  never  occurred  to  any  one  — 
least  of  all  to  myself  or  to  my  compan- 
ions. We  were  actively  interested  in 
the  library,  but  we  drew  from  it  only 
adult  books  —  our  "juveniles"  we  bor- 
rowed from  one  another.  Hence  we 
were  reading  at  the  same  time  Max 
Muller's  Chips  from  a  German  Work- 
shop and  Oliver  Optic's  Sailor  Boy; 
Merivale's  Rome  and  Alger's  Ragged 
Dick;  Tyndall's  Lectures  on  Heat  and 
Mayne  Reid's  Afloat  in  the  Forest.  It 
was  hit  or  miss ;  some  of  us  formed  good 
tastes  and  some  bad  ones.  I  date  some 
of  my  lifelong  friends  from  that  epoch, 
but  I  made  mistakes  whose  injurious  re- 
94 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

suits  have  also  been  lasting.  I  tackled 
George  Meredith  too  early  and  have 
only  just  succeeded  in  overcoming  my 
dislike.  I  did  the  same  with  Carlyle, 
and  I  can  scarcely  read  him  to  this  day. 
I  am  sure  that  if  there  had  been  some 
recognised  relations  in  those  days  be- 
tween libraries  and  children  all  of  us 
might  have  fared  better.  It  might,  of 
course,  have  been  worse.  Well-inten- 
tioned efforts  to  ram  "good  books"  down 
our  throats  might  have  resulted  in  a 
more  serious  mental  indigestion  than  that 
which  overtook  us  when  we  tried  to 
swallow  Meredith  and  Carlyle  out  of 
our  own  curiosity.  Only,  the  result 
might  have  been  a  distaste  for  books  al- 
together, such  as  similar  efforts  are  pro- 
ducing all  around  us,  making  lifelong 
non-readers,  or  at  best  readers  of  drivel, 
95 


THE  MAKING  OF 

out  of  persons  whose  mental  calibre  en- 
titles them  to  the  best  that  the  world  of 
literature  affords. 

There  were,  indeed,  some  feeble  at- 
tempts at  just  this  kind  of  thing,  but  we 
were  strong  enough  to  brush  them  aside. 
They  were  made  chiefly  in  the  Sunday- 
school,  an  institution  which  in  that  day 
accomplished  some  good  and  some  evil. 
I  do  not  intend  to  discuss  it  here;  but 
whatever  it  did,  it  certainly  raised  no 
one's  literary  taste.  The  very  name  of 
"Sunday-school  book"  was  synonymous 
in  our  minds  with  the  vapid,  unnatural, 
goody-goody  type  of  volume  issued  by  the 
ton  by  the  S.  P.  C.  K.  in  London  and 
written  to-order,  I  verily  believe,  by 
Grub  Street  hacks  at  the  rate  of  six  a 
week  for  so  much  a  dozen.  These  were 
the  only  children's  libraries  of  that  day. 
96 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

We  were  too  young  to  be  driven  to 
drink  by  them  but  not  too  young  to  be 
caught  on  the  rebound  by  some  literature 
that  was  below  the  library  standard  and 
below  the  standard  of  common  morality. 
All  that  saved  us  was  that  other  col- 
lection, with  its  history,  its  travel  and 
its  standard  fiction.  If  you  put  a  rotten 
apple  and  a  sound  one  side  by  side,  most 
normal  boys  will  take  the  sound  one, 
though  if  they  have  no  alternative  they 
may  nibble  into  some  pretty  badly  de- 
cayed fruit.  Most  Sunday-school  libra- 
ries are  better  now :  some  have  gone 
out  of  business  and  some  have  adopted 
a  via  media  that  is  better  still ;  they  are 
confining  themselves  to  aids  to  religious 
instruction,  leaving  general  literature  to 
be  taken  care  of  by  the  children's  depart- 
ment of  the  local  public  library.  In  those 
97 


THE  MAKING  OF 

days,  as  I  have  said,  such  public  libraries 
as  we  had  included  no  children's  depart- 
ments, and  the  first  one  was  not  founded 
for  at  least  ten  years  after  this,  when  an 
enterprising  New  York  woman  broached 
the  subject  in  a  council  of  educators. 
They  thought  it  "tremendous,"  but  it 
was  too  vast  for  them,  and  as  for  the 
libraries,  they  were  still  somnolent,  al- 
though many  of  the  public  or  semi-public 
institutions  were  by  that  time  including 
children's  books  in  their  collections. 
Every  one,  adult  and  child,  had  to  march 
up  to  a  cage  with  a  "call-slip"  and  feed 
with  it  the  animals  confined  behind  the 
bars,  waiting  thereafter  for  time  to  bring 
what  they  wanted,  or  something  "just 
as  good."  The  open-shelf  was  then  un- 
heard of  in  libraries  of  any  size.  But  the 
new  library  day  was  dawning.  The 
98 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

good  New  York  lady  opened  her  chil- 
dren's library,  which  lived  a  precarious 
life  and  died.  The  atmosphere  was  yet 
too  cold  for  that  little  plant,  but  the  sun 
was  up,  and  things  began  to  get  balmy. 
Shelves  were  thrown  open  here,  there 
and  everywhere,  and  when  the  resulting 
rush  came  the  children  were  on  top.  In 
their  enthusiasm  they  crowded  out  their 
elders  altogether,  and  librarians,  in  self- 
defence,  had  to  assign  them  separate 
quarters.  Everything  seemed  to  work 
together  to  push  on  the  modern  library 
movement,  and  in  a  trice  we  had  library- 
schools,  branches,  travelling  libraries, 
State  commissions  with  their  inspection 
and  field-work,  fine  buildings,  increased 
municipal  appropriations,  co-operation 
with  the  schools,  and,  last  but  not  least, 
children's  rooms  and  children's  libra- 
99 


THE  MAKING  OF 

rians.  What  has  been  done  for  the  chil- 
dren by  our  libraries  for  the  past  few 
years  may  appear  from  a  few  figures 
gathered  by  the  present  writer  for  a  re- 
port to  the  meeting  of  the  American  Li- 
brary Association  in  1913.  These  sta- 
tistics show  that  in  fifty-one  of  the 
largest  public  libraries  in  this  country, 
containing  altogether  nearly  nine  million 
books  and  having  a  combined  circulation 
of  thirty  millions,  there  are  now  1,147,- 
000  volumes  intended  especially  for  chil- 
dren, 280,000  having  been  added  during 
the  past  year  alone.  Children  draw  over 
eleven  million  volumes  annually  for 
home  use.  These  libraries  have  231 
rooms  devoted  entirely  to  children  and 
180  for  their  partial  use,  with  a  com- 
bined seating  capacity  of  16,000.  Chil- 
dren in  these  libraries  are  holders  of 
100 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

about  half  a  million  library  cards.  There 
are  forty-two  supervisors  of  children's 
work,  with  numerous  clerical  assistants 
and  staffs  of  nearly  500  persons,  many  of 
whom  have  made  the  subjects  of  library 
work  with  children  and  children's  read- 
ing a  matter  of  special  study.  Of  our 
schools  for  the  training  of  librarians  al- 
most all  give  special  courses  in  these  sub- 
jects and  there  is  one,  connected  with 
the  Carnegie  Library  of  Pittsburgh,  that 
devotes  itself  entirely  to  training  quali- 
fied children's  librarians. 

There  has  been  criticism  of  this  rapid 
and  remarkable  development  —  some  of 
it  justified ;  but  on  the  whole  we  may  look 
upon  it  as  not  the  least  of  the  steps  by 
which,  in  our  reorganisation  of  the  pub- 
lic library,  that  institution  has  made 
good  its  claim  to  be  an  active  factor  in 
101 


THE  MAKING  OF 

the  scheme  of  popular  education.  And 
especially  is  it  to  the  credit  of  the  chil- 
dren's librarians  that  they  alone,  or  al- 
most alone,  have  taken  up  seriously  the 
problem  of  children's  reading.  They 
have  studied  it,  and  they  have  gone  a 
long  distance  toward  solving  it.  In  some 
cases  they  have  been  prejudiced  —  a  man 
is  tempted  to  say  that  their  prejudices 
have  been  feministic;  but,  at  any  rate, 
these  prejudices  have  been  on  the  side  of 
sanity  and  morality.  And  they  have  up- 
held the  worthy  tradition  of  the  library's 
absolute  neutrality,  in  ignoring  commer- 
cial and  personal  considerations  alto- 
gether. They  have  calmly  thrown  out 
whole  series  of  boys'  and  girls'  books  ad- 
vertised as  possessing  all  the  virtues  and 
eagerly  loved  and  desired  by  a  generation 
of  children ;  simply  because  these  do  not 
102 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

come  up  to  the  standard  that  they  have 
set  up  for  the  library  to  follow.  To  the 
protests  of  indignant  authors,  the  wiles 
of  publishers  and  the  tearful  demands  of 
readers  they  have  turned  a  front  of  ada- 
mant. The  public  has  smiled,  scoffed 
and  scolded,  but  it  is  ending  by  meekly 
accepting  the  standards  of  these  library 
czars  —  or  rather  czarinas.  In  many 
cases  the  opponents  of  their  policies  have 
included  their  own  superiors  —  the  chief 
librarians  of  their  own  institutions,  whom 
they  have  been  obliged  to  convert  or  coax 
into  compliance.  One  of  the  results  is 
often  that  the  standard  of  a  library's  chil- 
dren's-room  is  far  higher  than  that  of  its 
adult  department.  Its  range  is  corre- 
spondingly narrower,  but  this  counts  but 
little  with  childish  readers. 

It  is  to  the  credit  of  the  children's  li- 
103 


THE  MAKING  OF 

brarians,  also,  that  a  definite  scheme  of 
co-operation  between  the  public  library 
and  the  public  school  has  been  adopted 
in  almost  all  towns  where  both  these 
institutions  exist.  With  a  watchful 
teacher  at  one  elbow  and  a  watchful  li- 
brarian at  the  other,  there  is  little  dan- 
ger either  that  the  child  shall  not  have  a 
sufficiently  long  list  of  books  from  which 
to  select  or  that  this  list  shall  contain 
anything  unworthy. 

Children  are  especially  qualified  to 
make  selection  in  the  way  that  we  have 
been  recommending.  Fitness  for  re- 
reading has  been  our  test,  and  children 
are  specially  fond  of  re-reading,  and  of 
repetition  of  anything  that  they  like. 
Who  has  not  heard  a  delighted  boy  or 
girl  listening  for  the  three  hundredth 
time  to  a  favourite  tale,  correcting  the 
104 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

details  from  time  to  time,  and  insisting 
that  the  right  prepositions  and  adverbs 
shall  all  be  inserted  in  their  proper 
places?  When  the  child  learns  to  read, 
this  fondness  for  repetition  continues, 
and  the  well-loved  volume  of  verses  or 
tales  is  thumbed  until  it  falls  to  pieces  — 
long,  indeed,  after  the  reader  knows 
every  word  of  it  by  heart.  Happy  are 
those  of  us  who  retain  this  fondness  for 
old  friends ;  many  of  us  are  laughed  out 
of  it,  or  abandon  it  from  a  feeling  that 
it  is  childish.  Its  prevalence  among  chil- 
dren makes  it  easy  for  them,  or  for  their 
elders,  to  pick  out  books  for  their  collec- 
tion of  room-mates. 

I  have  spoken  above  of  the  work  done 

by  children's  librarians  toward  the  sys- 

tematisation    of  children's  reading,    and 

have  hinted  that  its  results  have  not  met 

105 


THE  MAKING  OF 

with  ready  acceptance  on  all  sides,  espe- 
cially in  so  far  as  the  ruthless  exclusion 
of  old  favourites  is  concerned.  In  par- 
ticular, there  has  been  wide  difference 
of  opinion  regarding  the  expediency  of 
recognising,  in  books  for  young  people, 
the  evil  that  there  is  in  the  world.  Some 
would  have  the  writer  ignore  it  alto- 
gether; some  would  mention  it  only  to 
condemn  it  explicitly ;  others  would  give 
prominence  to  punishment  or  retribution, 
while  others  still  would  not  object  to  any 
true  presentation  that  does  not  make  the 
evil  attractive  or  seek  to  excuse  it.  The 
first  of  these  four  classes,  for  instance, 
would  not  put  into  any  boy's  hand  a  story 
in  which  one  of  the  characters  pilfers 
from  his  employer's  cash-drawer.  The 
second  would  admit  such  a  book,  pro- 
vided the  theft  were  clearly  condemned 
106 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

in  the  telling.  The  third  would  insist 
that  the  story  include  the  arrest  and  im- 
prisonment of  the  thief,  while  the  fourth 
would  not  object  to  the  incident  at  all, 
so  long  as  the  book  did  not  incline  the 
reader  to  pilfer  or  give  the  impression 
that  the  act  was  a  trivial  slip.  There 
can  be  no  doubt  that  the  modern  ten- 
dency is  toward  this  last  point  of  view, 
and  it  should  be  remembered  that  it  is 
not  necessarily  a  looser  one,  or  even  a 
more  liberal  one,  than  the  others.  One 
may  condemn  an  act  and  even  show  how 
it  brings  retribution,  and  yet  make  it  so 
attractive  that  the  reader  will  think  it 
worth  doing.  On  the  other  hand  one 
may  show  wrong  triumphant  in  such  a 
way  that  its  very  success  may  excite  all 
the  reader's  feelings  against  it.  This 
is  skilfully  done  in  a  recent  book  for 
107 


THE  MAKING  OF 

adults,  Frederick  Trevor  Hill's  Thirteenth 
Juror,  where  the  evils  of  our  system  of 
legal  procedure  are  set  forth  in  a  story 
that  ends  with  the  complete  triumph  of 
an  iniquitous  cause  through  the  aid  of 
that  system.  The  reader's  sympathies 
are  much  more  powerfully  enlisted  than 
if  the  story  had  ended  with  righteousness 
triumphant. 

As  for  the  policy  of  complete  igno- 
rance, one  is  tempted  to  say  that  possibly 
it  might  succeed  if  it  could  be  tried,  but 
it  cannot.  Certainly  it  has  never  yet 
had  a  trial.  To  attempt  to  keep  the 
knowledge  of  evil  from  our  children  by 
excluding  it  from  their  books  is  even 
more  futile  than  the  traditional  head- 
hiding  act  of  the  ostrich.  Most  of  the 
readers  detect  at  once  the  fact  that  such 
books  are  untrue  to  life,  and  their  falsity 
108 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

nullifies  whatever  influence  they  might 
otherwise  have.  Even  in  cases  where 
parents  have  so  cloistered  their  children 
that  they  cannot  make  the  comparison 
that  reveals  this  falsity,  the  inevitable 
revelation  will  come  sooner  or  later, 
and  it  is  the  very  worst  thing  that 
can  happen.  I  have  known  young 
people  to  be  ruined  by  it  rapidly  and 
thoroughly. 

The  trouble  with  the  sensible  way  of 
dealing  with  this  matter  is  that  to  create 
an  atmosphere  that  shall  reveal  wrong- 
doing in  its  moral  hideousness,  without 
telling  falsehoods  or  suppressing  facts,  re- 
quires more  skill  than  the  ordinary  writer 
of  children's  books  possesses.  To  write 
for  children  a  book  with  all  possible  good 
points  and  none  of  the  possible  bad  ones 
is  a  more  difficult  task  even  than  writing 
109 


THE  MAKING  OF 

the  ideal  novel.  No  one  has  yet  suc- 
ceeded in  doing  the  latter,  and  probably 
the  ideal  book  for  children  is  still  far- 
ther from  realisation. 

Lacking  ability  to  create  an  atmos- 
phere, most  writers  for  the  young  have 
striven  to  impart  as  much  information 
as  they  can.  Now  children  are  eager  for 
facts  ;  their  curiosity  is  insatiable.  Once 
excite  it,  and  you  may  fill  an  octavo  vol- 
ume with  what  they  want,  with  the  cer- 
tainty that  it  will  all  be  absorbed.  But 
neither  child  nor  adult  wants  an  excit- 
ing narrative  interrupted  with  disquisi- 
tions on  zoology,  history  or  topography. 
The  reader  knows  and  resents  the  writ- 
er*s  motive,  and  the  "improving"  matter 
is  duly  skipped.  I  do  not  say  that  it  is 
impossible  to  convey  information  in  nar- 
rative form;  but  I  do  say  that  most  of 
110 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

the  attempts  to  do  so  made  by  writers  of 
children's  books  are  failures. 

Another  moot  question  of  children's 
reading  concerns  the  inclusion  of  brutal, 
horrible  or  disgusting  details  in  stories. 
These  are  especially  frequent  in  the  old 
folk-tales,  and  many  good  persons  have 
been  active  in  expurgating  and  deodoris- 
ing these,  thereby,  in  the  belief  of  others, 
simply  spoiling  them.  There  can  be  no 
doubt  that  the  imaginations  of  some  sen- 
sitive children  are  injuriously  affected  by 
these  details.  It  is  equally  certain  that 
they  have  no  such  effect  on  others.  The 
end  of  the  Red  Riding-Hood  story  in  its 
classical  version,  in  which  the  wolf  de- 
vours the  heroine,  may  keep  a  child  of 
the  former  type  awake  in  sleepless  terror 
night  after  night,  whereas  to  another  lit- 
tle one  the  incident  might  appear  simply 
111 


THE  MAKING  OF 

as  a  diverting  episode.  It  is  not  by  fic- 
tion or  folk-lore  alone,  however,  that 
children  are  so  affected.  I  once,  as  a  boy, 
spent  an  unpleasant  week  in  the  house  of 
friends  near  the  scene  of  the  Wyoming 
massacre,  in  Pennsylvania,  simply  be- 
cause my  elders,  in  describing  the  event 
to  me,  had  failed  to  assure  me  that  its 
immediate  repetition  was  in  the  highest 
degree  unlikely.  Sensitive  children  must 
be  treated,  not  by  sheltering  them  from 
the  grotesque  and  horrible,  but  by  giving 
them  the  power  to  control  their  reactions. 
The  old  folk-stories  are  most  useful  in 
arousing  racial  memories  and  giving  a 
sense  of  racial  continuity.  The  chief 
criticism  that  may  be  made  on  our  man- 
ner of  using  them  is  that  we  do  not  em- 
phasise the  racial  element.  Our  chil- 
dren, most  of  them  of  predominant  Teu- 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

tonic  blood,  do  not  have  this  fact  brought 
before  them  in  their  reading,  largely  be- 
cause our  literary  heritage  is  so  over- 
whelmingly classic.  The  young  student 
of  history  sympathises  with  the  Roman, 
rather  than  with  his  own  valiant  ancestor 
who  defended  his  home  against  the 
Roman  legions  in  the  German  forests. 
The  boy  who  studies  mythology  knows 
all  about  Apollo  and  Minos  and  Iphi- 
genia  when  his  ideas  of  Woden  and 
Freya  are  still  hazy.  We  have  to  thank 
the  Wagner  music-dramas  for  most  of 
our  popular  knowledge  of  the  gods  whom 
our  own  fathers  worshipped.  Possibly 
the  interest  in  the  Nibelungen  trilogy, 
which  is  wider  than  the  circle  of  music- 
lovers,  may  be  accounted  for  by  the  stir- 
ring of  racial  memories.  Neither  the 
writers  nor  the  selectors  of  children's 
113 


THE  MAKING  OF 

books  have  taken  this  fact  sufficiently 
into  account. 

Another  element  that  needs  to  be  more 
carefully  considered  in  children's  books 
than  in  those  intended  for  adult  reading 
is  the  illustration.  The  "picture-book" 
excites  the  wonder  and  love  of  the  little 
one  long  before  its  text  means  anything 
to  him.  The  pictures  not  only  introduce 
him  to  literature  but  also  to  the  apprecia- 
tion of  art.  The  chief  trouble  with  the 
comic  supplements  of  the  newspapers,  so 
generally  condemned  by  those  who  have 
anything  to  do  with  the  training  of  chil- 
dren, and  so  generally  read  by  children 
in  spite  of  it  all,  is  their  atrocious  draw- 
ing and  colouring.  It  is  some  consola- 
tion to  know  that  the  coming  genera- 
tion, which  gazes  weekly  at  these  hor- 
rors, has  access  to  Boutet  de  Monvel  at 
114 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

the  library  and  also  at  home,  if  the  aid 
and  advice  of  the  children's  librarian  is 
to  count  for  anything. 

The  illustrations  in  story-books  are 
especially  important  in  the  case  of  child 
readers.  Illustrators  are  notoriously  apt 
to  use  their  own  imaginations  instead  of 
bothering  to  read  the  book  in  connection 
with  which  their  work  is  to  appear. 
They  calmly  represent  girls  of  sixteen  as 
old  women  of  sixty  and  stage  outdoor 
scenes  in  my  lady's  boudoir.  In  the  last 
frontispiece  at  which  I  had  the  pleasure  of 
glancing,  the  young  woman  shown  by  the 
artist  on  a  mountain  top  in  a  thin  white 
dress  had  been  more  appropriately 
garbed  in  tweeds  by  the  author.  This 
sort  of  thing  does  not  worry  the  adult 
reader  much.  He  would  probably  prefer 
the  omission  of  this  kind  of  picture,  but 
115 


THE  MAKING  OF 

he  is  tolerant  of  the  publisher's  eagerness 
to  provide  visual  food  for  a  certain  type 
of  mind,  to  supplement  the  intellectual 
pabulum  offered  by  the  novelist.  But 
the  child  is  not  so  wise  in  the  world's 
ways.  He  has  just  emerged  from  an  age 
where  the  picture  is  the  whole  thing ;  and 
even  at  his  own  age  it  is  still  more  im- 
portant than  the  text.  In  many  cases,  a 
boy  or  a  girl  looks  at  all  the  illustrations 
in  a  book  before  reading  a  word  of  it, 
getting  in  this  way  a  preliminary  idea  of 
plot,  characters  and  setting.  This  pre- 
liminary idea  colours  and  controls  the  im- 
pressions received  through  the  subsequent 
reading  far  more  than  most  adults  realise. 
If  the  illustrator  depicts  a  heroine  as  sit- 
ting on  the  limb  of  a  tree  when  the  au- 
thor says  she  is  out  in  a  boat,  the  adult 
reader  simply  laughs  at  the  artist's  error, 
116 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

but  a  child  would  be  more  likely  to 
ascribe  the  error  to  the  narrator.  With 
him  the  picture  is  nearer  reality  than  the 
verbal  description. 

The  half-tone  reproduction  of  the 
photograph,  which  has  sins  of  its  own  to 
answer  for,  is  at  any  rate  to  be  com- 
mended for  obliterating  this  objectionable 
personal  equation  of  the  illustrator  in 
books  of  travel  and  description.  In  fiction 
it  necessarily  persists,  and  in  juvenile  fic- 
tion it  must  be  reckoned  with  seriously. 

In  what  precedes  it  has  been  assumed 
that  the  child  meets  with  books  for  the 
first  time  at  home  or  in  the  children's 
room  of  the  public  library;  in  other 
words,  that  his  first  conception  of  the 
book  is  as  a  friend.  In  too  many  cases 
it  comes  upon  him  instead  as  an  enemy. 
Possibly  this  is  too  weak  a  word ;  he  finds 
117 


THE  MAKING  OF 

it  a  calamity,  a  catastrophe,  under  which 
he  is  crushed  to  earth  and  from  whose 
overwhelming  weight  he  vainly  tries  to 
escape  during  the  rest  of  his  natural  life. 
Does  this  language  seem  too  strong  to 
depict  the  effect  that  some  school-books 
have  upon  some  children  who  meet  books 
for  the  first  time  in  connection  with  a 
school  task?  Then  we  have  forgotten 
our  own  school  days ;  or  if  we  remember 
them,  we  have  failed  to  take  into  account 
the  fact  that  we  made  acquaintance  with 
the  friendly  book  before  we  came  into 
contact  with  the  inimical  one.  It  is  hard 
to  realise  the  conception  of  a  book  formed 
by  one  whose  only  association  with  books 
is  that  of  burdensome  and  distasteful  toil. 
Not  that  the  school  is  necessarily 
blameworthy.  Outworn  methods  may 
be  responsible  in  part  for  the  pupil's  dis- 
118 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

taste,  but  one  cannot  acquire  an  educa- 
tion without  toil  of  some  kind,  in  some 
degree.  The  unfortunate  fact  is  that  this 
toil  should  be  associated  with  books,  espe- 
cially in  cases  where  there  has  been  no 
previous  contact  with  them.  The  only 
remedy  that  I  can  see  is  to  ensure  this 
previous  contact,  and  to  maintain  its  as- 
sociations, in  the  library  and  at  home, 
through  the  school  period  and  beyond. 
The  young  reader  will  then  learn  to  dis- 
criminate, and  all  that  we  shall  have  to 
ask  the  teacher  is  that  he  shall  not  shat- 
ter our  idols  by  subjecting  them  to  analy- 
sis. The  fact  that  a  boy  looks  with  dis- 
taste upon  his  algebra  or  geometry  should 
not  and  may  not  interfere  with  his  love 
for  the  really  friendly  author;  but  how 
shall  we  ever  persuade  him  to  recognise 
the  nobility  of  Milton  or  the  humanity  of 
119 


THE  MAKING  OF 

Shakespeare,  or  the  grandeur  of  Homer,  if 
his  first  acquaintance  with  those  authors 
consists  merely  of  a  sort  of  analysis  that  in- 
terests no  one  but  the  professional  scholar  ? 
All  children  are  individualists;  they 
rebel  against  group-treatment,  even  while 
it  is  necessary,  in  the  family,  the  school, 
the  library.  Education  is  largely  a  strug- 
gle to  bring  them  under  the  yoke  of  the 
group,  and  the  attainment  of  adult  age 
is  a  recognition  of  that  bondage.  "  Chil- 
dren," says  H.  G.  Wells,  in  a  recent 
book,  "pass  out  of  a  stage  —  open,  beau- 
tiful, exquisitely  simple  —  into  silences 
and  discretions  beneath  an  imposed  and 
artificial  life.  And  they  are  lost.  Out 
of  the  finished,  careful,  watchful,  re- 
strained and  limited  man  or  woman,  no 
child  emerges  again."  This  is  indeed 
true.  But  the  tone  of  wistful  regret  that 
120 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

runs  through  it  is  hard  to  understand. 
Beautiful  as  childhood  is,  we  should  not 
mourn  its  development  into  something 
else ;  and  the  merging  of  that  fascinating, 
individualistic  frankness  into  a  thing  of 
relationships  —  restraining  and  limiting 
though  they  be,  is  but  the  passing  of  the 
child  into  the  man  or  the  woman.  The 
growth  of  character  is  largely  the  growth 
of  control.  Whatever  is  good  and  noble 
in  us  has  a  chance  to  sprout  and  burgeon 
because  we  have  learned  to  restrain  and 
limit  our  primitive  impulses.  When  the 
bonds  of  that  control  slacken  and  our 
"silences  and  discretions"  cease  to  be, 
our  friends  recognise  that  something 
abnormal  has  come  to  pass;  presently 
they  take  us  and  place  upon  us  the  re- 
straint that  we  no  longer  know  how  to 
place  upon  ourselves.  "The  child,"  says 


THE  MAKING  OF 

Mr.  Wells,  "carries  off  the  growing  jewel 
of  its  consciousness  to  hide  from  all 
mankind."  It  is  well  to  see  that  this 
jewel  is  of  the  true  water,  and  not  merely 
paste.  The  consciousness  that  the  child 
carries  from  boyhood  to  manhood  or 
from  girlhood  to  womanhood  should  be 
the  broad  consciousness  of  humanity, 
which  is  common  to  all  ages.  The  really 
human  book  will  arouse  and  maintain 
this  consciousness  as  no  other  influence 
will.  And  the  open-hearted  child  who 
has  taken  into  that  heart  of  his  the  human 
feeling  of  true  and  noble  books,  will 
retain  it  in  the  "finished,  careful,  watch- 
ful" adult  age,  so  that  its  very  limits  and 
restraints  may  be  but  elements  of  the 
control  that  makes  for  character. 

It  has  been  said  that  the  most  impor- 
tant thing  about  a  man  is  his  philosophy. 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

Now  philosophies  are  developed,  not 
taught.  Neither  the  man  who  believes 
that  "nothing  is  new,  nothing  is  true, 
and  nothing  matters,"  nor  the  one  who  is 
sure  that  all  creation  is  moving  toward 
"one  far-off  divine  event,"  acquired  his 
faith  in  school.  Each  is  the  resultant  of 
a  thousand  mental  and  spiritual  contacts, 
at  home  and  abroad,  in  church,  club, 
business  and  pleasure.  It  is  in  our  power 
to  see  that  a  large  proportion  of  these  con- 
tacts in  the  case  of  our  growing  children 
are  with  the  minds  of  the  good  and  great, 
through  books.  It  is  worth  our  while  to 
do  so,  and  worth  the  while  of  the  commu- 
nity and  the  race ;  for  by  a  man's  philos- 
ophy he  lives,  and  the  mental  associations 
of  our  children  of  to-day  will  largely  de- 
termine the  attitudes,  aims  and  achieve- 
ments of  the  men  and  women  of  to-morrow. 
123 


THE  MAKING  OF 


Recuperative  Bibliophily 

NEITHER    a    borrower    nor    a 
lender  be,"  says  Polonius  to 
his  son.     We  all  nod  our  heads 
in  approval  as  we  read,  and  then  we  keep 
on  borrowing  and  lending,  just  as  before. 
The  fact  is  that  borrowing  and  lending 
are  necessary  in  our  social  and  economic 
system :    they  are  the  one  concession  of 
that  system  in  the  direction  of  commun- 
ism.    The  man  who  would  hesitate  to 
share  the  ownership  of  his  goods  with 
those  who  lack  them   will  occasionally 
part   with   some   of   them   provisionally 
and  temporarily  by  way  of  a  loan.     The 
124 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

man  who  would  die  rather  than  ask  an 
alms,  out  and  out,  will  gladly  borrow, 
if  he  can  find  some  one  to  lend  to  him. 
The  trouble  is  that  all  this  lending  and 
borrowing,  which  should  be  but  a  tem- 
porary transfer  of  ownership,  amounts  in 
many  cases  to  the  permanent  transfer 
which  it  professes  not  to  be.  This  is 
notoriously  the  case  with  certain  small 
objects  —  umbrellas,  for  instance.  It  is 
unfortunately  coming  to  be  so  with  books. 
The  man  who  is  asked  to  lend  a  book 
nowadays  thinks  not  so  much  of  his  will- 
ingness to  lend  as  of  the  possibility  of 
losing  sight  of  his  property  altogether. 
He  can  rely  neither  on  the  mental  ability 
nor  on  the  general  character  of  the 
would-be  borrower,  for  these  have  proved 
no  bars  to  the  appropriation  of  property 
in  books.  It  is  not  so  much  wilful 
125 


THE  MAKING  OF 

retention  as  the  absence  of  a  stimulus 
to  restitution.  The  borrower  sees  the 
volume  occasionally  and  lazily  recognises 
its  ownership.  "Oh,  there  is  that  book 
of  Smith's,"  he  says  to  himself;  "I  must 
leave  that  at  his  house  some  day  in  pass- 
ing." If  he  had  borrowed  a  horse  of 
Smith  and  the  sight  of  the  animal  evoked 
no  more  potent  reaction,  he  would  be 
looked  upon  as  dishonest.  But  "books 
are  different,"  and  it  is  because  they  are 
different  that  this  chapter  becomes  the 
fitting  climax  to  a  book  on  "The  Making 
of  an  American's  Library."  For  a  li- 
brary, being  a  collection,  is  formed  by 
accretion,  and  it  is  accretion  in  the  net, 
not  the  gross,  that  is  effective.  What  a 
man  has,  in  the  way  of  a  library,  is  not 
what  he  has  acquired,  but  that  sum  dimin- 
ished by  what  his  friends  have  borrowed. 
126 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

There  was  a  time  when,  if  a  man  had 
no  funds  to  buy  books,  he  must  perforce 
borrow  from  his  friends,  if  he  would 
read  at  all.  Literature  thus  teems  with 
allusions  to  book-lending  and  book-bor- 
rowing; to  the  unappreciative  borrower 
and  the  borrower  who  does  not  return 
his  loan  —  the  man  who,  to  quote  Lord 
Eldon's  witticism,  is  "backward  in  ac- 
counting but  practised  in  book-keeping ;" 
to  the  churlish  lender  and  the  selfish 
owners  who  refuse  to  lend  at  all  —  those 
whom  Rabelais  savagely  terms  the  "ras- 
cally rabble  of  people  who  will  not 
lend." 

Leigh  Hunt,  in  his  essay  on  "My 
Books,"  calls  himself  a  "meek  son  in  a 
family  of  book-losers,"  and  asserts  that 
he  lost  half  a  dozen  decent-sized  libraries 
before  his  thirty -eighth  year.  He  casti- 
127 


THE   MAKING  OF 

gates,  under  the  revealing  disguise  of 
initials,  the  friends  who  have  borrowed 
his  books,  never  to  return  them ;  yet  he 
confesses  that  he  himself  never  sees  an 
interesting  book  on  another's  shelf  with- 
out wishing  to  carry  it  off. 

Charles  Lamb  classifies  his  borrowing 
friends  thus:  "Some  read  slow;  some 
mean  to  read  but  don't  read ;  and  some 
neither  read  nor  mean  to  read,  but  bor- 
row to  leave  you  an  opinion  of  their 
sagacity." 

Such  public  or  semi-public  libraries  as 
existed  in  those  days  did  not  lend  their 
treasures.  They  opened  their  doors  to 
the  favoured  few,  and  beyond  those 
doors  their  volumes  were  never  suffered 
to  go.  Now  our  public  libraries  lend 
books  —  some  of  them  at  the  rate  of  mil- 
lions of  issues  annually.  It  is  an  easy 
128 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

matter  for  any  one  to  obtain  books  by 
this  kind  of  loan.  But,  instead  of  les- 
sening the  demand  for  private  loans,  this 
has  only  stimulated  it.  By  throwing 
open  the  doors  of  our  large  collections, 
we  have  engendered  a  thirst  for  books 
that  we  cannot  wholly  satisfy.  And  it 
is  so  simple  a  matter  to  borrow  a  book 
from  a  public  library  that  the  borrower 
cannot  help  resenting  an  attitude  of 
greater  retentiveness  on  the  part  of  a 
friendly  private  owner. 

Possibly  a  mistake  has  been  made  in 
calling  the  distribution  of  books  on  a 
large  scale  by  a  public  institution  "lend- 
ing" and  "borrowing."  It  is  really  co- 
operative use  by  the  public  —  a  book 
club  on  a  huge  scale,  where  the  public 
buys  its  own  books,  pays  for  housing 
them  and  making  them  accessible,  and 
129 


THE  MAKING  OF 

submits  to  the  laws  imposed  under  its 
own  authority  to  regulate  their  equitable 
distribution.  Does  a  man  "borrow" 
when  he  receives  a  book  under  these 
circumstances?  Surely  not  in  the  same 
sense  as  when  he  receives  it  from  a  man  in 
whose  ownership  of  it  he  does  not  share. 
We  have,  however,  assimilated  our  li- 
brary nomenclature  to  that  properly  em- 
ployed when  one  man  lends  a  book  to 
another.  Possibly  we  may  be  able  to  re- 
ciprocate by  borrowing  the  public  ma- 
chinery for  the  protection  and  insurance 
of  the  private  lender.  History  presents 
numerous  instances  of  attempts  to  sys- 
tematise the  lending  of  private  books  and 
still  more  of  generous  owners  who  were 
willing  to  throw  open  their  collections 
to  the  use  of  friends,  or  even  of  the  pub- 
lic. Plutarch  tells  us  that  the  library  of 
130 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

Lucullus  was  "open  to  all."  Brander 
Matthews  has  gathered  some  rather 
striking  instances  of  book-owners  who 
have  been  liberal  of  their  store  —  the 
wagon-load  of  volumes  sent  to  Dickens 
by  Carlyle,  when  asked  for  aid  with  the 
Tale  of  Two  Cities;  the  German  book- 
lover  whose  book-plate  bore  the  motto 
Sibi  et  Amicis  —  for  self  and  friends; 
the  kindred  motto  of  Grolier,  Grolierii 
et  Amicorum  —  Grolier's  and  his  friends'. 
Christian  de  Savigny  went  even  further 
in  his  self-abnegation,  for  his  plate  bears 
the  words  non  mihi  sed  aliis,  not  for 
self  but  for  others.  In  his  essay  "On  the 
Lending  and  Marking  of  Books,"  from 
which  these  items  are  quoted,  Professor 
Matthews  gives  it  as  his  opinion  that, 
while  the  rare  or  curious  book  should 
never  be  lent,  it  would  be  churlish  to  re- 
131 


THE   MAKING  OF 

fuse  to  a  friend  "the  book  of  to-day,  — 
the  book  in  print,  the  book  of  commerce, 
which  can  be  had  anywhere  for  the  ask- 
ing." But  if  any  one  may  obtain  the 
book  so  easily,  why  borrow  it?  One  is 
tempted  to  sympathise  with  Scaliger, 
whose  book-plate  bears  the  scriptural 
motto  lie  ad  vendentes  —  go  to  them  that 
sell.  It  is  the  book  difficult  to  obtain 
elsewhere  that  one  wants  to  borrow,  and 
that  the  owner  should  be  willing  to  lend. 
Professor  Matthews's  rules,  however,  in- 
dicate that  he  is  liberal  in  this  respect, 
as  in  most  others.  They  are  as  follows : 
"I  never  lend  a  book  which  I  cannot 
replace.  I  never  lend  a  book  of  refer- 
ence which  I  may  need  myself  while  it 
is  out.  I  never  lend  a  volume  of  a  set. 
I  never  lend  without  taking  a  receipt, 
signed  by  the  borrower.  I  never  lend  a 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

book  that  I  cannot  afford  to  lose.  I 
never  lend  a  book  to  a  man  whom  I 
know  to  be  untidy,  or  careless,  or  incon- 
siderate; but  I  give  a  liberal  construc- 
tion to  this  regulation.  And  by  means 
of  these  rules  I  am  enabled  to  reconcile 
my  conscience  to  the  individual  owner- 
ship of  books." 

Then  there  was  the  eccentric  English 
philosopher,  Henry  Cavendish,  who 
completely  and  satisfactorily  solved  the 
problem  of  book-lending  by  placing  his 
large  library  in  a  house  adjoining  his  resi- 
dence and  throwing  it  open  to  the  public 
on  the  same  terms  as  if  it  had  been  a 
public  library.  Borrowed  books  were 
charged  to  the  borrowers,  including  him- 
self, and  their  return  in  a  specified  time 
was  insisted  upon  and  enforced.  The 
owner  had  no  less  use  of  his  books  than 
133 


THE  MAKING  OF 

if  they  had  been  stored  under  his  own 
roof.  Possibly  he  lent  them  to  no 
greater  extent.  But  he  lent  them,  and  the 
public  borrowed  them,  under  conditions 
that  protected  the  rights  of  both  lender 
and  borrowers,  and  ensured  the  return 
of  the  books  in  good  condition.  Think, 
if  you  please,  what  a  general  adoption 
of  this  plan  might  mean,  especially  if 
the  owners  of  books  should  decide  to 
promote  efficiency  and  economy  by  pool- 
ing their  property  and  housing  it  under 
a  single  roof! 

Something  of  this  kind  was  proposed 
in  an  article  on  "The  Gentle  Art  of 
Book  Lending,"  contributed  to  The 
Nineteenth  Century  (London,  June, 
1895),  by  Mr.  George  Somes  Layard, 
who  presented  therein  a  scheme  for  co- 
operative book-lending  by  private  own- 
134 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

ers.  Briefly  stated,  his  plan  was  to  form 
a  committee  of  the  library-owners  of  a 
region,  appoint  an  "honourary  librarian 
or  official  go-between,"  possibly  "some 
capable  lady,"  and  prepare  a  catalogue 
of  the  book  resources  of  the  district 
in  private  hands,  which,  among  other 
things,  should  set  forth  the  particular 
conditions  under  which  each  item  was 
offered  for  use  —  whether  by  loan,  out- 
right, under  the  librarian's  supervision, 
or  at  the  owner's  house.  Machinery 
was  elaborated  —  on  paper  —  for  dealing 
with  each  of  these  cases. 

I  cannot  learn  that  this  plan,  or  any- 
thing resembling  it,  was  ever  put  into 
practice.  The  trouble  is,  of  course,  that 
it  requires  machinery  —  a  central  office 
or  authority  of  some  sort  to  operate  it. 
It  is  futile  to  think  of  placing  such  ma- 
135 


THE  MAKING  OF 

chinery  in  the  hands  of  unpaid  amateurs, 
and  an  expert  staff  is  costly.  None  of 
these  objections  applies  now  that  the  ma- 
chinery for  just  this  kind  of  supervision 
and  control  has  been  elaborated  and  is 
supported  at  the  expense  of  the  com- 
munity in  our  public  libraries.  It  is  per- 
fectly possible,  with  the  aid  of  these,  to 
realise  the  philanthropic  impulses  and  to 
carry  out  the  schemes,  which  lack  of  the 
proper  machinery  has  forced,  in  so  many 
instances,  to  remain  without  practical 
expression.  There  is  probably  no  town 
so  small  that  it  does  not  contain  books 
worth  borrowing.  In  many  places  the 
sum  of  such  books  in  private  hands  is 
larger  than  that  of  all  the  volumes  in 
public  and  institutional  libraries.  These 
books  are  often  far  more  valuable  than 
any  that  have  been  purchased,  or  could 
136 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

be  afforded,  by  the  local  public  library. 
Their  owners,  in  many  cases,  would  be 
perfectly  willing  to  allow  accredited 
scholars  and  writers  to  use  the  books, 
but  the  fact  that  they  exist  and  the  place 
where  they  are  kept,  are  as  safely  hidden 
from  the  public  as  if  the  books  were  cast 
into  the  depths  of  the  sea. 

The  local  public  library  would  usu- 
ally be  a  safer  place  for  these  volumes 
in  every  way  than  the  homes  of  their 
owners.  The  danger  of  loss  from  fire 
and  from  theft  is  less.  The  public  li- 
brary, in  a  small  town,  that  should  be 
able  to  receive  from  its  citizens  such  an 
accretion  as  this  would  be  fortunate  in- 
deed. That  library,  that  town,  those 
public-spirited  citizens  —  are  non-exist- 
ent. We  are  individualists,  one  and  all, 
where  property  rights  are  concerned,  and 
137 


THE  MAKING  OF 

every  one  of  us  wants  his  property  under 
his  thumb,  not  in  a  place  where  it  is 
easy  for  some  one  else  to  use  it.  Even 
after  he  dies,  instead  of  going  to  the 
public  library  by  bequest,  it  and  its  fel- 
lows are  sold  and  scattered  among  other 
selfish  individualists,  and  the  proceeds 
are  given  to  the  heirs  to  aid  in  provid- 
ing them  with  steam  yachts  and  motor 
cars.  If  we  are  to  devise  means  to  re- 
lease this  vast  stock  of  books  for  the  use 
of  those  who  are  able  to  profit  by  them 
and  to  turn  them  to  the  public  service, 
we  shall  have,  I  am  afraid,  to  do  it  in 
such  a  way  as  not  to  remove  the  books 
from  the  custody  of  their  owners. 

This  means  a  plan  like  that  elaborated 
by  Mr.  Layard,  except  that  his  central 
committee    of    amateurs    would    be    re- 
placed by  the  local  library  board.     His 
138 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

"capable  lady"  would  still  be  in  the  sad- 
dle, for  most  of  our  librarians  are  women ; 
but  her  capabilities  would,  without  doubt, 
be  increased  by  her  library-school  train- 
ing, her  years  of  experience,  and  her 
knowledge  of  local  conditions  and  per- 
sonalities. Almost  every  town  of  any 
size  has  now,  in  connection  with  its  public 
library,  machinery  for  informing  the  pub- 
lic what  books  that  library  has  and  where 
they  are,  together  with  facilities  for 
using  them,  lending  them,  tracing  their 
whereabouts  and  ensuring  their  safe  re- 
turn. All  this  machinery  is  administered 
under  public  auspices  and  its  cost  is  met 
by  taxation.  If  we  are  not  to  waste 
time,  money  and  material  on  a  huge 
scale,  whatever  is  done  to  systematise 
the  use  of  valuable  private  books  by  others 
than  their  owners  and  to  see  that  those 
139 


THE  MAKING  OF 

owners  do  not  lose  them,  must  be  done 
by  utilising  this  machinery. 

This  may  be  accomplished  very  simply 
and  effectively  in  the  following  way : 
Let  every  owner  of  a  book  that  he  is 
willing  to  let  others  use  send  its  name  to 
the  local  public  library,  stating  at  the 
same  time  whether  the  borrower  may 
take  it  home,  or  must  use  it  in  the  li- 
brary building,  or  must  consult  it  in  the 
owner's  house.  Any  other  conditions  on 
which  its  use  is  granted  should,  of 
course,  be  stated  at  the  same  time. 
Cards  for  all  these  books  should  then 
be  inserted  in  the  library  catalogue  pre- 
cisely as  if  the  library  owned  them.  The 
author  card  might  bear  also  the  owner's 
name  and  address,  with  the  conditions  of 
use,  or  this  information  might  be  kept 
in  a  separate  index,  the  catalogue  card 
140 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

bearing  simply  some  abbreviation  to  de- 
note the  fact  that  the  book  was  privately 
owned  and  in  the  custody  of  the  owner. 
The  advantages  of  this  plan  would  be 
threefold  —  to  the  public,  to  the  library, 
and  to  the  book-owner.  The  book-user 
would  be  able  to  ascertain  not  only  what 
books  were  in  the  public  library,  on  some 
subject  in  which  he  was  interested ;  but 
what  and  how  many  books,  accessible  to 
him,  were  in  the  town.  Those  in  the 
hands  of  private  owners  willing  to  lend 
were,  of  course,  accessible  to  him  before 
this  enlargement  of  the  catalogue,  but  he 
did  not  know  it,  and  even  if  he  had 
known  it,  he  might  have  hesitated  to  ask. 
Now  the  library  asks  for  him,  and  his 
relations  as  a  borrower  with  the  owner 
as  a  lender  are  systematised  and  facili- 
tated by  the  use  of  the  whole  machine 
141 


THE  MAKING  OF 

that  has  been  elaborated  and  perfected 
by  the  library  to  this  end. 

The  library  finds  its  available  stock 
of  books  practically  multiplied.  It  is 
able  to  satisfy  more  of  its  readers  than 
before,  and  to  satisfy  just  that  class  whose 
satisfaction  means  most  to  the  library,  do- 
ing it  at  a  minimum  expenditure  of  energy 
and  with  machinery  already  provided. 

The  book-owner  sees  certain  of  his 
books  actually  performing  a  public  ser- 
vice. He  finds  that  it  is  possible  to  ex- 
press his  willingness  to  lend,  which  has 
always  existed  in  a  vague  form,  in  terms 
of  such  service.  He  finds  the  machinery 
for  putting  the  books  in  the  hands  of 
those  who  will  use  them  to  advantage, 
ready  to  hand  and.  able  not  only  to  place 
his  property  but  to  insure  its  proper  care 
and  safe  return. 

142 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

Moreover,  not  only  is  he  enabled  to 
lend  when  it  is  proper  that  he  should  do 
so,  but  it  also  becomes  easy,  and  even 
necessary,  for  him  to  refuse  when  the 
conditions  are  unsatisfactory.  When  he 
is  asked  for  the  loan  of  a  book,  under  the 
old  conditions,  it  will  be  simple  and 
quite  proper  for  him  to  answer,  if  he  de- 
sires to  do  so,  that  he  has  placed  the 
lending  of  his  books  in  the  hands  of  the 
public  library  and  that  he  desires  to  use 
its  machinery  in  all  cases.  The  bor- 
rower is  put  to  little  inconvenience,  for 
he  can  reach  the  public  library  easily  by 
telephone.  The  only  difference  is  that 
his  act  is  duly  registered  and  that  he  is 
made  to  return  the  book  when  he  is 
through  with  it,  all  by  the  operation  of 
a  system  to  which  he  is  accustomed.  He 
might  have  resented  the  charging  of  the 
143 


THE  MAKING  OF 

book  by  the  owner  and  the  receipt  of  an 
overdue  notice  from  him ;  but  the  same 
acts  excite  no  resentment  when  preformed 
by  the  library  as  a  regular  part  of  its  ad- 
ministration. 

A  plan  of  this  kind  has  so  much  in  its 
favour  from  all  standpoints,  that  an  ad- 
vocate of  it  runs  the  danger  of  overlook- 
ing the  special  advantage  that  alone  ex- 
cuses the  inclusion  of  it  in  a  series  of 
articles  on  the  making  of  a  private  li- 
brary. This  advantage  is  its  contribu- 
tion toward  the  limitation  and  the  con- 
servation of  such  a  library.  Limitation, 
because  with  free  permission  to  borrow 
from  his  neighbours,  one  may  omit  many 
purchases  that  he  would  otherwise  feel 
like  making;  conservation,  because,  as 
we  have  already  seen,  danger  of  loss 
from  such  free  offering  of  his  own  books 
144 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

is  reduced  to  a  minimum.  Possibly  these 
points  need  a  word  or  two  of  amplifica- 
tion. The  ideal  private  library  is  a  col- 
lection of  intimates.  There  are  plausi- 
ble reasons  for  going  beyond  this;  but 
the  book-lover  should  have  himself  well 
under  control  when  he  yields  to  them; 
that  way  lies  bankruptcy.  Most  of  them 
are  less  plausible  now  than  they  used  to 
be.  There  is  the  necessity  for  books  of 
reference.  Every  one  must  have  a  dic- 
tionary and  a  cyclopedia  —  perhaps  one 
or  two  foreign  lexicons.  Beyond  this  it 
is  hardly  necessary  to  go.  Most  of  us 
consult  other  reference  books  than  these 
infrequently,  and  we  may  find  them  at 
the  Public  Library.  There  are  the  books 
that  have  been  read  and  laid  aside  —  can- 
didates for  the  collection  that  have  not 
passed  muster.  Why  buy  these  at  all? 
145 


THE  MAKING  OF 

They  may  be  tested  by  borrowing  them 
from  the  Library.  There  is  the  book 
that  is  too  rarely  used  or  too  costly  for  a 
small  public  library  to  buy,  which  tempts 
you  for  some  personal  reason.  Do  you 
know  that  each  of  three  friends  of  yours, 
in  your  town,  have  yielded  to  these  very 
considerations  and  have  bought  the 
book?  If  the  plan  outlined  above  were 
in  force,  you  would  know  it,  and  your 
appreciation  of  the  fact  that  one  copy 
would  amply  supply  the  demand  would 
operate  to  limit  your  purchases,  to  the 
great  relief  of  your  purse.  Two  of  your 
neighbours  would  be  wishing  that  they 
had  been  similarly  restrained.  In  course 
of  time,  the  co-operating  book-owners  of 
a  town,  in  conference  with  the  librarian 
of  theTublic  Library,  may  find  it  profit- 
able to  work  out  a  systematic  limitation 
146 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

of  the  field  of  purchase,  similar  to  that 
agreed  upon  in  Chicago,  and  some  other 
places,  by  several  large  libraries.  In 
cases  where  it  would  obviously  be  a 
waste  of  money  for  more  than  one  li- 
brary to  buy  an  expensive  work,  this 
agreement  specifies  the  library  that  shall 
buy  it,  one  specialising  in  science,  for 
instance,  another  in  art  and  a  third  in 
history.  Whichever  buys  the  work  it  is 
freely  accessible  to  all  citizens.  The  ex- 
tension of  this  plan  to  private  buyers 
ought  not  to  be  difficult,  in  places  where 
the  scheme  of  co-operation  above  out- 
lined is  already  in  operation;  and  the 
advantage  to  book-owners,  individually 
and  collectively,  is  obvious. 

The   second   point  —  that   relating   to 
conservation  —  has  possibly  been  insisted 
upon  sufficiently  in  the  early  part  of  this 
147 


THE  MAKING  OF 

chapter,  but  the  function  of  the  library  as 
a  guarantor  of  safe  return  needs  a  little 
more  discussion.  Doubtless,  books  lent 
in  this  way  would  follow  Professor 
Brander  Matthews's  first  rule  in  being 
chiefly  those  possible  to  replace.  Only  in 
such  cases  has  guaranty  or  insurance  a 
proper  meaning.  One  may  "insure"  the 
Mona  Lisa  for  a  million  dollars;  but 
this  does  not  mean  that  it  could  ever  be 
replaced.  When  a  man  insures  his  life, 
he  does  not  do  it  with  the  thought  of 
avoiding  death,  but  of  preventing  the 
loss  which  death  would  otherwise  occa- 
sion. The  money  that  he  earns  when 
alive  and  devotes  to  his  family's  support 
can  be  replaced,  dollar  for  dollar,  by  that 
paid  over  by  the  insurance  company.  In 
like  manner,  a  library  cannot  guarantee 
the  return,  to  the  owner,  of  the  actual 
148 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

copy  of  a  book  that  he  has  lent;  but  it 
can  guarantee  the  purchase  of  another 
copy  when  the  book  is  replaceable. 
When  a  book-owner,  therefore,  lends 
a  book  through  a  library,  he  is  insured 
against  loss  with  a  thoroughness  that 
would  be  impossible  if  the  book  went 
directly  to  the  individual  who  is  to  use 
it.  The  library  not  only  has  more  power- 
ful machinery  to  enforce  the  return  of 
the  book,  but  it  has  greater  resources 
and  greater  responsibility  to  pay  for  it  if 
it  proves  to  be  irrecoverably  lost.  Also, 
there  is  a  strong  likelihood  that  it  will  be 
able  to  recoup  itself  by  enforcing  pay- 
ment from  the  loser. 

And  this  insurance  does  not  cost  the 

lender  a  cent.     He  pays  for  it  by  his 

willingness  to  do  public  service  —  one  of 

the  few  cases,  if  it  is  not  the  only  case, 

149 


THE  MAKING  OF 

where  such  willingness  is  worth  actual 
cash.  Owing  to  it,  a  man's  book,  lent 
in  this  way,  would  be  safer  than  when 
locked  up  in  his  own  bookcase  without 
insurance.  To  equal  it,  the  owner 
would  have  to  take  out  policies,  not  only 
against  fire,  but  against  flood,  tornado, 
burglary  and  every  other  imagined  loss ; 
for  the  library's  guaranty  has  absolutely 
no  limitation,  except  that  of  the  time 
during  which  the  book  is  in  its  charge. 
To  wipe  out  this  limitation  also,  the 
owner  need  only  use  the  library  as  a  per- 
manent place  of  deposit ;  which  brings  us 
around  again  to  the  position  taken  near 
the  beginning  of  this  article.  It  was 
there  hinted  that  human  selfishness 
would  prevent  any  such  general  abandon- 
ment of  private  custody.  But  perhaps, 
when  the  owner  begins  to  look  at  the 
150 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

matter  from  this  standpoint  of  insur- 
ance, human  selfishness  may  turn  about 
and  pull  in  the  other  direction;  who 
knows?  The  elimination  of  waste  and 
the  promotion  of  efficiency  by  co-opera- 
tion and  consolidation  is  in  the  air.  The 
trust  is  an  example  in  the  field  of  com- 
merce and  industry.  Charitable  and 
civic  organisations  are  combining  and 
establishing  great  indexes  to  their  work, 
freely  accessible  to  all  the  societies  con- 
cerned, so  that  none  need  try  to  do  some- 
thing already  well  done  by  some  one  else. 
If  book-owners  who  are  willing  to  be 
book-lenders,  all  the  more  because  they 
occasionally  feel  the  need  of  becoming 
borrowers,  will  follow  suit,  we  shall 
presently  see  the  ownership  of  books  ex- 
alted into  a  civic  virtue.  And  the  biblio- 
phile will  love  his  books  more  than  ever, 
151 


THE  MAKING  OF 

when  bibliophily  shall,  in  some  such  fash- 
ion as  this,  have  become  recuperative. 

He  who  is  exploring  a  canyon  in  the 
Far  West  is  ever  and  anon  tempted  to 
turn  aside  into  some  fascinating  side 
canyon.  The  purpose  of  his  exploration 
is  not  thwarted  thereby,  and,  indeed,  it 
may  be  aided  and  supplemented,  provided 
only  he  returns  in  the  end  to  the  original 
valley  and  continues  his  course  down  the 
stream. 

So,  in  the  chapters  that  end  here, 
although  we  have  turned,  now  and  again, 
to  discuss  side  issues,  it  is  to  be  hoped 
that  these  have  served,  in  the  end,  to 
clarify  and  enlighten  the  main  stream  of 
thought,  which  is  that  an  American's 
private  library  must  be  born  of  personal 
interest  and  fed  upon  love.  We  Ameri- 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

cans  are  a  practical  people,  but  we  are 
at  the  same  time  the  most  idealistic  of 
nations.  To  buy  a  book  because  some 
one  else  likes  it  is  not  a  practical  pro- 
ceeding, but  to  be  guided,  in  purchasing, 
by  the  impulse  of  interest  and  love  is 
both  practical  and  ideal.  And  it  is  in 
accord  with  the  recent  awakening  of  our 
social  and  civic  consciousness  that  what 
we  do  by  and  for  ourselves  should  be 
considered  always  in  its  relationships  with 
what  we  do  with  others  —  what  we  may 
do  for  each  other.  Hence  we  cannot  con- 
sider our  private  book-buying  apart  from 
our  public  book-buying.  The  Public 
Library  is  in  a  position  to  aid  us  at  every 
step  and  we  in  turn  should  be  able  and 
willing  to  aid  it ;  for  by  so  doing  we  are 
merely  helping  our  neighbours. 

If  we  are  ever  to  give  the  lie  to  those 
153 


AN  AMERICAN'S  LIBRARY 

prophets  of  evil  who  tell  us  that  de- 
mocracy is  for  the  small  nations  alone, 
never  for  the  great,  and  that  as  we  grow, 
our  old  customs  and  our  old  laws  must 
perforce  become  more  and  more  a  cloak 
for  oligarchy  and  privilege  —  if  we  are 
ever  to  confound  those  who  sneer  at 
popular  education  and  despise  popular 
government,  it  must  be  by  such  practical 
co-operation  as  this  —  a  demonstration 
that,  at  bottom,  private  and  public  ac- 
tivities are  but  different  aspects  of  the 
same  thing  —  that  what  the  individual 
has,  he  holds  in  trust  for  his  fellows,  and 
what  the  community  has  it  must  place 
at  the  disposal  of  each  citizen  in  the  full- 
est and  freest  way  compatible  with  its 
own  existence  and  progress. 


154 


INDEX 


INDEX 


ADVERTISING  BY  LIBRARIES, 
67. 

American  Library  Associa- 
tion Booklist,  82;  report 
on  work  with  children,  100. 

BOOK-ADVERTISING,  WASTED, 
80. 

Book-borrowing,  126. 

Book-club,  library  as  a,  129. 

Book-display  in  libraries, 
84. 

Book-distribution,  new  meth- 
ods of,  66. 

Book-insurance,  through  pub- 
lic loans,  148. 

Book-lending,  124;  private, 
134 ;  private,  through  pub- 
lic libraries,  138. 

Book-plates  cited,  131. 

Book-reviews  from  librarian's 
standpoint,  82. 

Book-selection,  advice  in,  8 ; 
by  browsing,  55 ;  by  chil- 
dren, 104;  circulation  as 
aid  to,  10;  with  aid  of 
bookstore,  12. 

Bookstore  as  an  aid  in  book- 
selection,  12;  in  coopera- 


tion with  library,  80;  li- 
brary as  a,  77. 

44  Book-taught  Bilkins,"  19. 

Book-thieves,  50,  69. 

Books  as  room-mates,  1 ;  as 
short  cuts,  34;  change  in 
their  subject-matter,  15. 

Boutet  de  Monvel,  114. 

Boy  and  the  book,  91. 

Branch  libraries,  66. 

Browsing,  37 ;  art  of,  30. 

CARLYLE,  THOMAS,  95 ;  anec- 
dote of,  131. 

Catalogue,  library  as  a,  73 ;  of 
private  books,  in  a  public 
library,  140. 

Cavendish,  Henry,  library  of, 
133. 

Censorship  of  children's 
books,  106. 

Chicago,  library  cooperation 
in,  147. 

Children's  books,  a  recent 
thing,  92;  censorship  of, 
106;  information  in,  110. 

Children's  library,  first,  98. 

Children's  reading,  58,  91; 
standardized,  102. 


157 


INDEX 


Children's  rooms,  67 ;  statis- 
tics of,  100. 

Christmas  book  exhibits, 
78. 

Circulation  as  aid  to  book- 
selection,  10. 

Classification,  as  aid  in  book- 
testing,  10. 

DEWEY,     MELVIL  ;      library 

bookstore,  76. 
Dickens,    Charles,    anecdote 

of,  131. 

EDISON,  THOS.  A.,  labora- 
tory methods,  70. 

Education,  modern,  32. 

Efficiency  in  library  loans, 
151. 

Eldon,  Lord,  quoted,  127. 

FLYNT,  JOSIAH,  quoted,  30. 
Folk-tales  in  children's  read- 
ing, 111. 
Free-access   system,    10,    66, 


GROLIER,  book-plate  of,  131. 

HALF-TONE     ILLUSTRATIONS, 

117. 
Hill,  Frederick  Trevor,  book 

noticed,  108. 

Holmes,  O.  W.,  quoted,  91. 
Hunt,  Leigh,  quoted,  127. 


ILLUSTRATIONS  IN  BOOKS, 
114. 

Inspiration  from  books,  45; 
in  juvenile  books,  110. 

Insurance  by  public  loan,  148. 

Interest  as  source  of  book- 
selection,  21. 

Interlibrary  loans,  66. 

LABORATORY,  LIBRARY  AS  A, 
61. 

Lamb,  Charles,  quoted,  128. 

Layard,  Geo.  Somes,  quoted, 
134. 

Lectures  in  libraries,  66. 

Lending,  in  our  economic 
system,  124. 

Librarian,  as  book-expert, 
74;  work  overdone,  57. 

Libraries  on  special  subjects, 
17 ;  Sunday  school,  96. 

Library  a  net  result,  126 ;  and 
school,  cooperation,  104 ; 
as  a  bookstore,  77;  first, 
for  children,  98;  modern 
idea  of,  63;  the  private, 
62. 

Library,  see  also  PUBLIC  LI- 
BRARY. 

Limitation  of  field  of  pur- 
chase, 147. 

Limitations  of  a  public  col- 
lection by  private  borrow- 
ing, 144. 

Lists,  confusing  to  beginners, 
13 ;  disapproved,  5. 

Literary  laboratory,  61. 


158 


INDEX 


Literature  as  contact  with 
life,  68;  enlargement  of 
scope,  16;  preservation  by 
distribution,  64. 

Lucullus,  library  of,  131. 

MATTHEWS,  BRANDEB, 

quoted,  131;  rules  for 
lending  books,  132. 

Meredith,  George,  95. 

Mythology  in  literature,  113. 

NEUTRALITY,    a    feature    of 

libraries,  74. 

New  England  library,  A.,  94. 
Nibelungen     trilogy,      racial 

elements  in,  113. 

OPEN  SHELVES  IN  LIBRARIES, 

10,  66,  98. 

PAWLOW,  Russian  physiol- 
ogist, experiments  of,  34. 

Philosophy,  importance  of, 
122. 

Picture-books  for  children, 
114. 

Pittsburgh,  training  school, 
101. 

Plutarch,  quoted,  130. 

Pocket-editions,  49. 

Poe,  E.  A.,  on  poems,  4. 

Polonius;  advice  to  his  son, 
124. 

Public  library  an  aid  to  pri- 
vate ownership,  11;  as  a 
depositary  for  private 


books,  137;  as  a  labora- 
tory, 61 ;  as  a  lender,  128 ; 
as  a  hunting  ground,  47 ; 
as  a  best  collection,  10; 
does  it  discourage  book- 
ownership?  26;  expansion 
of,  86;  in  St.  Louis, 
78. 

Publication,  quantity  of,  28. 

Publicity  in  libraries,  67. 

RABELAIS,  quoted,  127. 
Racial  element  in  literature, 

112. 

Reading  at  "  odd-times,"  39. 
"  Recuperative  Bibliophily," 

124. 

Red  Riding  Hood,  111. 
Reference  books  for  private 

use,  145. 
Re-reading,  6;    by  children, 

104. 

ST.  Louis  PUBLIC  LIBRARY, 
78. 

Savigny,  Chr.  de,  book-plate 
of,  131. 

Scaliger,  book-plate  of,  132. 

School,  books  in  a,  32;  co- 
operation with,  by  libra- 
ries, 66,  104. 

School-books ;  effect  on  chil- 
dren, 118. 

Sets,  condemned,  22,  24. 

Smith,  Goldwin,  quoted,  87. 

S.  P.  C.  K.,  London,  publica- 
tions of,  96. 


159 


INDEX 

Special  libraries,  origin,  17.  Tests  of  books  in  a  library. 

Speech,  written  and  oral,  48.  72. 

Spelling  reform,  49. 

Sunday  school  books,  96.  WAGNER,  services   to    racial 

"  Superficiality,"  40.  literature,  113. 

Wells,  H.  G.,  quoted,  120. 

TELEPHONE   COMPANY'S   LI-  Works,      complete;       con- 

BRARIES,  17.  demned,  22. 


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